ed to amuse
themselves at the Cardinal's expense. At seven o'clock one evening, a
young Abbe presented himself at the Cardinal's house, Hotel de Montmorin,
Rue Plumet, as by appointment of His Eminence, and was, by his secretary,
ushered into the study and asked to wait there. Hardly half an hour
afterwards, two persons, pretending to be agents of the police, arrived
just as the Cardinal's carriage had stopped. They informed him that the
woman introduced into his house in the dress of an Abby was connected
with a gang of thieves and housebreakers, and demanded his permission to
arrest her. He protested that, except the wife of his porter, no woman
in any dress whatever could be in his house, and that, to convince
themselves, they were very welcome to accompany his valet-de-chambre into
every room they wished to see. To the great surprise of his servant, a
very pretty girl was found in the bed of His Eminence's bed-chamber,
which joined his study, who, though the pretended police agents insisted
on her getting up, refused, under pretence that she was there waiting for
her 'bon ami', the Cardinal.

His Eminence was no sooner told of this than he shut the gate of his
house, after sending his secretary to the commissary of police of the
section. In the meantime, both the police agents and the girl entreated
him to let them out, as the whole was merely a badinage; but he remained
inflexible, and they were all three carried by the real police commissary
to prison.

Upon a complaint made by His Eminence to Bonaparte, the Police Minister,
Fouche, received orders to have those who had dared thus to violate the
sacred character of the representative of the Holy Pontiff immediately,
and without further ceremony, transported to Cayenne. The Cardinal
demanded, and obtained, a process verbal of what had occurred, and of the
sentence on the culprits, to be laid before his Sovereign. As Eugene de
Beauharnais interested himself so much for the individuals involved in
this affair as both to implore Bonaparte's pardon and the Cardinal's
interference for them, many were inclined to believe that he was in the
secret, if not the contriver of this unfortunate joke. This supposition
gained credit when, after all his endeavours to save them proved vain, he
sent them seventy-two livres L 3,000--to Rochefort, that they might, on
their arrival at Cayenne, be able to buy a plantation. He procured them
also letters to the Governor, Victor Hughes, r