natural capacity to distinguish errors from
reality, nor judgment enough to perceive that what appeared improving and
charming in theory, frequently became destructive and improper when
attempted to be put into practice. Returned to his own country, his
acquired half-learning made him wholly dissatisfied with his Government,
with his religion, and with himself. In our Revolution he thought that
he saw the first approach towards the perfection of the human species,
and that it would soon make mankind as good and as regenerated in society
as was promised in books. With our own regenerators he extenuated the
crimes which sullied their work from its first page, and declared them
even necessary to make the conclusion so much the more complete. When,
therefore, Bonaparte, in 1796, entered the capital of Lombardy, Melzi was
among the first of the Italian nobility who hailed him as a deliverer.
The numerous vexations and repeated pillage of our Government, generals,
commissaries, and soldiers, did not abate his zeal nor alter his opinion.
"The faults and sufferings of individuals," he said, "are nothing to the
goodness of the cause, and do not impair the utility of the whole." To
him, everything the Revolution produced was the best; the murder of
thousands and the ruin of millions were, with him, nothing compared with
the benefit the universe would one day derive from the principles and
instruction of our armed and unarmed philosophers. In recompense for so
much complacency, and such great patriotism, Bonaparte appointed him, in
1797, a plenipotentiary from the Cisalpine Republic to the Congress at
Rastadt; and, in 1802, a vice-president of the Italian Republic. As Melzi
was a sincere and disinterested republican fanatic, he did not much
approve of the strides Bonaparte made towards a sovereignty that
annihilated the sovereignty of his sovereign people. In a conference,
however, with Talleyrand, at Lyons, in February, 1802, he was convinced
that this age was not yet ripe for all the improvements our philosophers
intended to confer on it; and that, to prevent it from retrogading to the
point where it was found by our Revolution, it was necessary that it
should be ruled by enlightened men, such as he and Bonaparte, to whom he
advised him by all means never to give the least hint about liberty and
equality. Our Minister ended his fraternal counsel with obliging Melzi
to sign a stipulation for a yearly sum, as a douceur for t