Madame Bonaparte for several hours to
her chamber; he dismissed favourite generals; treated with ignominy
members of his Council of State; and towards his physician, secretaries,
and principal attendants, he committed unbecoming and disgraceful marks
of personal outrage. I have heard it affirmed that, though her husband,
when shutting her up in her dressing-room, put the key in his pocket,
Madame Napoleon found means to resent the ungallant behaviour of her
spouse, with the assistance of Madame Remusat.

LETTER III.

PARIS, August, 1805.

MY LORD:--No act of Bonaparte's government has occasioned so many, so
opposite, and so violent debates, among the remnants of revolutionary
factions comprising his Senate and Council of State, as the introduction
and execution of the religious concordat signed with the Pope. Joseph
was here again the ostensible negotiator, though he, on this as well as
on former occasions, concluded nothing that had not been prepared and
digested by Talleyrand.

Bonaparte does not in general pay much attention to the opinions of
others when they do not agree with his own views and interests, or
coincide with his plans of reform or innovation; but having in his public
career professed himself by turns an atheist and an infidel, the
worshipper of Christ and of Mahomet, he could not decently silence those
who, after deserting or denying the God of their forefathers and of their
youth, continued constant and firm in their apostasy. Of those who
deliberated concerning the restoration or exclusion of Christianity, and
the acceptance or rejection of the concordat, Fouche, Francois de Nantz,
Roederer, and Sieges were for the religion of Nature; Volney, Real,
Chaptal, Bourrienne, and Lucien Bonaparte for atheism; and Portalis,
Gregoire, Cambaceres, Lebrun, Talleyrand, Joseph and Napoleon Bonaparte
for Christianity. Besides the sentiments of these confidential
counsellors, upwards of two hundred memoirs, for or against the Christian
religion, were presented to the First Consul by uninvited and volunteer
counsellors,--all differing as much from one another as the members of
his own Privy Council.

Many persons do Madame Bonaparte, the mother, the honour of supposing
that to her assiduous representations is principally owing the recall of
the priests, and the restoration of the altars of Christ. She certainly
is the most devout, or rather the most superstitious of her family, and
of her name; but had