with them without reluctance, and at the same time
affixed their price. I returned them, as I knew they were desired by him
for his collection, but he continued obstinate. I told him, therefore,
that, as I was acquainted with his inclination to perform a generous
action, I would, instead of payment for the pictures, indicate a person
deserving his assistance. I mentioned the old Duchesse de ------, who is
seventy-four years of age and blind; and, after possessing in her youth
an income of eight hundred thousand livres--is now, in her old age,
almost destitute. He did for this worthy lady more than I expected; but
happening, in his visits to relieve my friend, to cast his eye on the
daughter of the landlady where she lodged, he found means to prevail on
the simplicity of the poor girl, and seduced her. So much do I know
personally of Lucien Bonaparte, who certainly is a composition of good
and bad qualities, but which of them predominate I will not take upon me
to decide. This I can affirm--Lucien is not the worst member of the
Bonaparte family.

LETTER XXXI.

PARIS, August, 1805.

MY LORD:--As long as Austria ranks among independent nations, Bonaparte
will take care not to offend or alarm the ambition and interest of
Prussia by incorporating the Batavian Republic with the other provinces
of his Empire. Until that period, the Dutch must continue (as they have
been these last ten years) under the appellation of allies, oppressed
like subjects and plundered like foes. Their mock sovereignty will
continue to weigh heavier on them than real servitude does on their
Belgic and Flemish neighbours, because Frederick the Great pointed out to
his successors the Elbe and the Tegel as the natural borders of the
Prussian monarchy, whenever the right bank of the Rhine should form the
natural frontiers of the kingdom of France.

That during the present summer a project for a partition treaty of
Holland has by the Cabinet of St. Cloud been laid before the Cabinet of
Berlin is a fact, though disseminated only as a rumour by the secret
agents of Talleyrand. Their object was on this, as on all previous
occasions when any names, rights, or liberties of people were intended to
be erased from among the annals of independence, to sound the ground, and
to prepare by such rumours the mind of the public for another outrage and
another overthrow. But Prussia, as well as France, knows the value of a
military and commercial navy