most
persons plotted and laboured for power merely to be enabled to gather
treasure, though, after they had obtained both, much above their desert
and expectation, instead of being satiated or even satisfied, they
bustled and intrigued for more, until success made them unguarded and
prosperity indiscreet, and they became with their wealth the easy prey of
rival factions. Such was the case of Danton, of Fabre d'Eglantine, of
Chabot, of Chaumette, of Stebert, and other contemptible wretches,
butchered by Robespierre and his partisans--victims in their turn to men
as unjust and sanguinary as themselves. He had, therefore, laid out a
different plan of conduct for himself. He had fixed upon fifty millions
of livres--as the maximum he should wish for, and when that sum was in
his possession, he resolved to resign all pretensions to rank and
employment, and to enjoy 'otium cum dignitate'. He had kept to his
determination, and so regulated his income that; with the expenses, pomp,
and retinue of a Prince, he is enabled to make more persons happy and
comfortable than his extortions have ruined or even embarrassed. He now
lives like a philosopher, and endeavours to forget the past, to delight
in the present, and to be indifferent about futurity. He chose,
therefore, for a wife, a lady whom he loved and esteemed, in preference
to one whose birth would have been a continual reproach to the meanness
of his own origin.

You must, with me, admire the modesty of a citizen sans-culotte, who,
without a shilling in the world, fixes upon fifty millions as a reward
for his revolutionary achievements, and with which he would be satisfied
to sit down and begin his singular course of singular philosophy. But
his success is more extraordinary that his pretensions were extravagant.
This immense sum was amassed by him in the short period of four years,
chiefly by bribes from foreign Courts, and by selling his protections in
France.

But most of the other Bonapartes have made as great and as rapid fortunes
as Lucien, and yet, instead of being generous, contented, or even
philosophers, they are still profiting by every occasion to increase
their ill-gotten treasures, and no distress was ever relieved, no talents
encouraged, or virtues recompensed by them. The mind of their garrets
lodges with them in their palaces, while Lucien seems to ascend as near
as possible to a level with his circumstances. I have myself found him
beneficent without ostent