Moniteur, against your Government and country,
are frequently his patriotic progeny, or rather, he often shares with
Talleyrand and Hauterive their paternity.

The Revolution has not made Comte de Segur more happy with regard to his
family, than in his circumstances, which, notwithstanding his brilliant
grand-mastership, are far from being affluent. His amiable wife died of
terror, and brokenhearted from the sufferings she had experienced, and
the atrocities she had witnessed; and when he had enticed his eldest son
to accept the place of a sub-prefect under Bonaparte, his youngest son,
who never approved our present regeneration, challenged his brother to
fight, and, after killing him in a duel, destroyed himself. Comte de
Segur is therefore, at present, neither a husband nor a father, but only
a grand master of ceremonies! What an indemnification!

Madame Napoleon and her husband are both certainly under much obligation
to this nobleman for his care to procure them comparatively decent
persons to decorate their levees and drawing-rooms, who, though they have
no claim either to morality or virtue, either to honour or chastity, are
undoubtedly a great acquisition at the Court of St. Cloud, because none
of them has either been accused of murder, or convicted of plunder; which
is the case with some of the Ministers, and most of the generals,
Senators and counsellors. It is true that they are a mixture of beggared
nobles and enriched valets, of married courtesans and divorced wives,
but, for all that, they can with justice demand the places of honour of
all other Imperial courtiers of both sexes.

When Bonaparte had read over the names of these Court recruits, engaged
and enlisted by De Segur, he said, "Well, this lumber must do until we
can exchange it for better furniture." At that time, young Comte d'
Arberg (of a German family, on the right bank of the Rhine), but whose
mother is one of Madame Bonaparte's Maids of Honour, was travelling for
him in Germany and in Prussia, where, among other negotiations, he was
charged to procure some persons of both sexes, of the most ancient
nobility, to augment Napoleon's suite, and to figure in his livery. More
individuals presented themselves for this honour than he wanted, but they
were all without education and without address: ignorant of the world as
of books; not speaking well their own language, much less understanding
French or Italian; vain of their birth, but not ashamed o