COURT OF ST. CLOUD

Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London

BOOK 2.

LETTER I.

PARIS, September, 1805.

MY LORD:--Since my return here, I have never neglected to present myself
before our Sovereign, on his days of grand reviews and grand diplomatic
audiences. I never saw him more condescending, more agreeable, or, at
least, less offensive, than on the day of his last levee, before he set
out to be inaugurated a King of Italy; nor worse tempered, more petulant,
agitated, abrupt, and rude than at his first grand audience after his
arrival from Milan, when this ceremony had been performed. I am not the
only one who has made this remark; he did not disguise either his good or
ill-humour; and it was only requisite to have eyes and ears to see and be
disgusted at the difference of behaviour.

I have heard a female friend of Madame Bonaparte explain, in part, the
cause of this alteration. Just before he set out for Italy, the
agreeable news of the success of the first Rochefort squadron in the West
Indies, and the escape of our Toulon fleet from the vigilance of your
Lord Nelson, highly elevated his spirits, as it was the first naval
enterprise of any consequence since his reign. I am certain that one
grand naval victory would flatter his vanity and ambition more than all
the glory of one of his most brilliant Continental campaigns. He had
also, at that time, great expectations that another negotiation with
Russia would keep the Continent submissive under his dictature, until he
should find an opportunity of crushing your power. You may be sure that
he had no small hopes of striking a blow in your country, after the
junction of our fleet with the Spanish, not by any engagement between our
Brest fleet and your Channel fleet, but under a supposition that you
would detach squadrons to the East and West Indies in search of the
combined fleet, which, by an unexpected return, according to orders,
would have then left us masters of the Channel, and, if joined with the
Batavian fleet, perhaps even of the North Sea. By the incomprehensible
activity of Lord Nelson, and by the defeat (or as we call it here, the
negative victory) of Villeneuve and Gravina, all this first prospect had
vanished. Our vengeance against a nation of shopkeepers we were not only
under the necessity of postponing, but, from the unpolite threats and
treaties of the Cabinet of St. Petersburg with those o