report and the scandalous chronicle say that she bestows her
favours on every person who wishes to bestow on her his name, and that,
therefore, her gallants are at least as numerous as her suitors.

Such is the true statement of the past, as well as the present, with
regard to Madame de C----n. She relates, however, a different story. She
says that she is the daughter of the Marquis de M de T-----, of a
Languedoc family; that she sailed, when a child, with her mother in a
felucca from Nice to Malta, there to visit her brother; was captured by
an Algerine pilot, separated from her mother, and carried to
Constantinople by a merchant of slaves; there she was purchased by Comte
de C----n, who restored her to her family, and whom, therefore,
notwithstanding the difference of their ages, she married from gratitude.
This pretty, romantic story is ordered in our Court circles to be
officially believed; and, of course, is believed by nobody, not even by
the Emperor and Empress themselves, who would not give her the place of a
lady-in-waiting, though her request was accompanied with a valuable
diamond to the latter. The present was kept, but the offer declined.

All the members of the Bonaparte family, female as well as male, honour
her house with their visits and with the acceptance of her invitations;
and it is, therefore, among our fashionables, the 'haut ton' to be of the
society and circle of Madame de C----n.

Last February, Madame de P----t (the wife of Comte de P----t, a relative,
by her husband's side, of Madame de C----n, and who by the Revolution
lost all their property, and now live with her as companions) was brought
to bed of a son; the child was baptized by the Cardinal de Belloy, and
Madame Joseph and Prince Louis Bonaparte stood sponsors. This occurrence
was celebrated with great pomp, and a fete was given to nearly one
hundred and fifty per sons of both sexes,--as usual, a mixture of
ci-devant nobles and of ci-devant sans-culottes; of rank and meanness; of
upstart wealth and beggared dignity.

What that day struck me most was the audacity of the Senator Villetard in
teasing and insulting the old Cardinal de Belloy with his impertinent
conversation and affected piety. This Villetard was, before the
Revolution, a journeyman barber, and was released in 1789 by the mob from
the prison of the Chatelet, where he was confined for theft. In 1791 his
patriotism was so well known in the Department of Yonne, that he