to avoid all effusion of blood, surrendered without
resistance. He was denounced by the municipality to the National
Assembly, for these and other plots and attempts, but Robespierre and
other Jacobins defended him, and he escaped even imprisonment. During
1793 and 1794, he monopolized the contract for making and providing the
armies with gunpowder; a favour for which he paid Barrere, Carnot, and
other members of the Committee of Public Safety, six millions of
livres--but by which he pocketed thirty-six millions of livres--himself.
He was, under the Directory, menaced with a prosecution for his pillage,
but bought it off by a douceur to Rewbel, Barras, and Siyes. In 1799, he
advanced Bonaparte twelve millions of livres--to bribe adherents for the
new Revolution he meditated, and was, in recompense, instead of interest,
appointed first Counsellor of State; and when Lucien Bonaparte, in
September, 1800, was sent on an embassy to Spain, Chaptal succeeded him
in the Ministry of the Interior. You may see by this short account that
the chemist Chaptal has, in the Revolution, found the true philosophical
stone. He now lives in great style, and has, besides three wives alive
(from two of whom he has been divorced), five mistresses, with each a
separate establishment. This Chaptal is regarded here as the most moral
character that has figured in our Revolution, having yet neither
committed a single murder nor headed any of our massacres.

LETTER VII.

PARIS, September, 1805.

MY LORD:--I have read a copy of a letter from Madrid, circulated among
the members of our foreign diplomatic corps, which draws a most
deplorable picture of the Court and Kingdom of Spain. Forced into an
unprofitable and expensive war, famine ravaging some, and disease other
provinces, experiencing from allies the treatment of tyrannical foes,
disunion in his family and among his Ministers, His Spanish Majesty
totters on a throne exposed to the combined attacks of internal
disaffection and external plots, with no other support than the advice of
a favourite, who is either a fool or a traitor, and perhaps both.

As the Spanish monarchy has been more humbled and reduced during the
twelve years' administration of the Prince of Peace than during the whole
period that it has been governed by Princes of the House of Bourbon, the
heir of the throne, the young Prince of Asturias, has, with all the
moderation consistent with duty, rank, and consanguin