elf in his youth, and afterwards a
postilion, a dragoon, a deserter, a coiner, a Jacobin, and a terrorist;
and he has, with all the meanness and brutality of these different
trades, a kind of native impertinence and audacity which shocks and
disgusts. He seems to say, "I am a villain. I know that I am so, and I
am proud of being so. To obtain the rank I possess I have respected no
human laws, and I bid defiance to all Divine vengeance. I might be
murdered or hanged, but it is impossible to degrade me. On a gibbet or
in the palace of a Prince, seized by the executioner or dining with
Sovereigns, I am, I will, and I must, always remain the same. Infamy
cannot debase me, nor is it in the power of grandeur to exalt me."
General, Ambassador, Field-marshal, First Consul, or Emperor, Lasnes will
always be the same polluted, but daring individual; a stranger to remorse
and repentance, as well as to honour and virtue. Where Bonaparte sends a
banditto of such a stamp, he has resolved on destruction.

A kind of temporary disgrace was said to have occasioned Lasnes's first
mission to Portugal. When commander of the consular guard, in 1802, he
had appropriated to himself a sum of money from the regimental chest,
and, as a punishment, was exiled as an Ambassador, as he said himself.
His resentment against Bonaparte he took care to pour out on the Regent
of Portugal. Without inquiring or caring about the etiquette of the
Court of Lisbon, he brought the sans-culotte etiquette of the Court of
the Tuileries with him, and determined to fraternize with a foreign and
legitimate Sovereign, as he had done with his own sans-culotte friend and
First Consul; and, what is the more surprising, he carried his point. The
Prince Regent not only admitted him to the royal table, but stood sponsor
to his child by a wife who had been two years his mistress before he was
divorced from his first spouse, and with whom the Prince's consort, a
Bourbon Princess and a daughter of a King, was also obliged to associate.

Avaricious as well as unprincipled, he pursued, as an Ambassador, his
former business of a smuggler, and, instead of being ashamed of a
discovery, proclaimed it publicly, deserted his post, was not reprimanded
in France, but was, without apology, received back again in Portugal. His
conduct afterwards could not be surprising. He only insisted that some
faithful and able Ministers should be removed, and others appointed in
their place, m