e said to him, "Monster, this, your
atrocious law, is your sentence of death; it has brought thousands of
innocent persons to an untimely end; you shall die by my hands as a
victim, if the tribunals do not condemn you to the scaffold as an
executioner or as a criminal."

Merlin has bought national property to the amount of fifteen million of
livress--and he is supposed to possess money nearly to the same amount,
in your or our funds. For a man born a beggar, and educated by charity,
this fortune, together with the liberal salaries he enjoys, might seem
sufficient without selling justice, protecting guilt, and oppressing or
persecuting innocence.

LETTER XXIX.

Paris, August, 1805.

MY LORD:--The household troops of Napoleon the First are by thousands
more numerous than those even of Louis XIV. were. Grenadiers on foot and
on horseback, riflemen on foot and on horseback, heavy and light
artillery, dragoons and hussars, mamelukes and sailors, artificers and
pontoneers, gendarmes, gendarmes d'Alite, Velites and veterans, with
Italian grenadiers, riflemen, dragoons, etc., etc., compose all together
a not inconsiderable army.

Though it frequently happens that the pay of the other troops is in
arrears, those appertaining to Bonaparte's household are as regularly
paid as his Senators, Counsellors of State, and other public
functionaries. All the men are picked, and all the officers as much as
possible of birth, or at least of education. In the midst of this
voluptuous and seductive capital, they are kept very strict, and the
least negligence or infraction of military discipline is more severely
punished than if committed in garrison or in an encampment. They are
both better clothed, accoutred, and paid, than the troops of the line,
and have everywhere the precedency of them. All the officers, and many
of the soldiers, are members of Bonaparte's Legion of Honour, and carry
arms of honour distributed to them by Imperial favour, or for military
exploits. None of them are quartered upon the citizens; each corps has
its own spacious barracks, hospitals, drilling-ground, riding or
fencing-houses, gardens, bathing-houses, billiard-table, and even
libraries. A chapel has lately been constructed near each barrack, and
almoners are already appointed. In the meantime, they attend regularly
at Mass, either in the Imperial Chapel or in the parish churches.
Bonaparte discourages much all marriages among the military in