e Court of
Madrid. In Prussia, his talents did not cause him to be dreaded, nor his
personal qualities make him esteemed. In France, he is laughed at as a
boaster, but not trusted as a warrior. In Spain, he is neither dreaded
nor esteemed, neither laughed at nor courted; he is there universally
despised. He studies to be thought a gentleman; but the native porter
breaks through the veil of a ridiculously affected and outre politeness.
Notwithstanding the complacent grimaces of his face, the self-sufficiency
of his looks, his systematically powdered and dressed hair, his showy
dress, his counted and short bows, and his presumptuous conversation,
teeming with ignorance, vulgarity, and obscenity, he cannot escape even
the most inattentive observer.

The Ambassador, Beurnonville, is now between fifty and sixty years of
age; is a grand officer of our Imperial Legion of Honour; has a brother
who is a turnkey, and two sisters, one married to a tailor, and another
to a merchant who cries dogs' and cats' meat in our streets.

LETTER IX.

PARIS, September, 1805.

MY LORD:--Bonaparte did not at first intend to take his wife with him
when he set out for Strasburg; but her tears, the effect of her
tenderness and apprehension for his person, at last altered his
resolution. Madame Napoleon, to tell the truth, does not like much to be
in the power of Joseph, nor even in that of her son-in-law, Louis
Bonaparte, should any accident make her a widow.

During the Emperor's absence, the former is the President of the Senate,
and the latter the Governor of this capital, and commander of the troops
in the interior; so that the one dictates the Senatus Consultum, in case
of a vacancy of the throne, and the other supports these civil
determinations with his military forces. Even with the army in Germany,
Napoleon's brother-in-law, Murat, is as a pillar of the Bonaparte
dynasty, and to prevent the intrigues and plots of other generals from an
Imperial diadem; while, in Italy, his step-son, Eugene de Beauharnais, as
a viceroy, commands even the commander-in-chief, Massena. It must be
granted that the Emperor has so ably taken his precautions that it is
almost certain that, at first, his orders will be obeyed, even after his
death; and the will deposited by him in the Senate, without opposition,
carried into execution. These very precautions evince, however, how
uncertain and precarious he considers his existence to be, and that