German Princes and Electors at Strasburg, need only
say the word to find hundreds of princely recruits for her knighthood in
petto. Her mantle, as a Grand Mistress of the Order of CONFIDENCE, has
been already embroidered at Lyons, and those who have seen it assert that
it is truly superb. The diamonds of the star on the mantle are valued at
six hundred thousand livres.

LETTER XXVI.

PARIS, October, 1805.

MY LORD:--Since Bonaparte's departure for Germany, fifteen individuals
have been brought here, chained, from La Vendee and the--Western
Departments, and are imprisoned in the Temple. Their crime is not
exactly known, but private letters from those countries relate that they
were recruiting for another insurrection, and that some of them were
entrusted as Ambassadors from their discontented countrymen to Louis
XVIII. to ask for his return to France, and for the assistance of Russia,
Sweden, and England to support his claims.

These are, however, reports to which I do not affix much credit. Had the
prisoners in the Temple been guilty, or only accused of such crimes, they
would long ago have been tortured, tried, and executed, or executed
without a trial. I suppose them mere hostages arrested by our
Government, as security for the tranquillity of the Chouan Departments
during our armies' occupation elsewhere. We have, nevertheless, two
movable columns of six thousand men each in the country, or in its
vicinity, and it would be not only impolitic, but a cruelty, to engage or
allure the unfortunate people of these wretched countries into any plots,
which, situated as affairs now are, would be productive of great and
certain evil to them, without even the probability of any benefit to the
cause of royalty and of the Bourbons. I do not mean to say that there
are not those who rebel against Bonaparte's tyranny, or that the Bourbons
have no friends; on the contrary, the latter are not few, and the former
very numerous. But a kind of apathy, the effect of unavailing resistance
to usurpation and oppression, has seized on most minds, and annihilated
what little remained of our never very great public spirit. We are tired
of everything, even of our existence, and care no more whether we are
governed by a Maximilian Robespierre or by a Napoleon Bonaparte, by a
Barras or by Louis XVIII. Except, perhaps, among the military, or among
some ambitious schemers, remnants of former factions, I do not believe a
Moreau, a Macdonald