eard of these and other enormous accusations, and far be
it from me to defend, extenuate, or even deny them. But suppose all this
infamy to be real, to be proved, to be authenticated, which it never has
been, and, to its whole extent, I am persuaded, never can be--what are
the cruel and depraved acts of which Lucien has been accused to the
enormities and barbarities of which Napoleon is convicted? Is the
poisoning a wife more criminal than the poisoning a whole hospital of
wounded soldiers; or the assisting to kill some confined persons,
suspected of being enemies, more atrocious than the massacre in cold
blood of thousands of disarmed prisoners? Is incest with a sister more
shocking to humanity than the well-known unnatural pathic but I will not
continue the disgusting comparison. As long as Napoleon is unable to
acquit himself of such barbarities and monstrous crimes, he has no right
to pronounce Lucien unworthy to be called his brother; nor have
Frenchmen, as long as they obey the former as a Sovereign, or the
Continent, as long as it salutes him as such, any reason to despise the
latter for crimes which lose their enormity when compared to the horrid
perpetrations of his Imperial brother.

An elderly lady, a relation of Lucien's wife, and a person in whose
veracity and morality I have the greatest confidence, and for whom he
always had evinced more regard than even for his own mother, has repeated
to me many of their conversations. She assures me that Lucien deplores
frequently the want of a good and religious education, and the tempting
examples of perversity he met with almost at his entrance upon the
revolutionary scene. He says that he determined to get rich 'per fas aut
nefas', because he observed that money was everything, and that 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