la Lozere, of the third; and the Counsellor of State, Dauchy, of the
fourth. The secret police agents, formerly called spies, were also
considerably increased.

LETTER XXVIII.

PARIS, October, 1805.

MY LORD:--Before Bonaparte set out for the Rhine, the Pope's Nuncio was
for the first time publicly rebuked by him in Madame Bonaparte's
drawing-room, and ordered loudly to write to Rome and tell His Holiness
to think himself fortunate in continuing to govern the Ecclesiastical
States, without interfering with the ecclesiastical arrangements that
might be thought necessary or proper by the Government in France.

Bonaparte's policy is to promote among the first dignitaries of the
Gallican Church the brothers or relatives of his civil or military
supporters; Cambacere's brother is, therefore, an Archbishop and
Cardinal, and one of Lebrun's, and two of Berthier's cousins are Bishops.
As, however, the relatives of these Senators, Ministers, or generals,
have, like themselves, figured in many of the scandalous and blasphemous
scenes of the Revolution, the Pope has sometimes hesitated about
sanctioning their promotions. This was the case last summer, when
General Dessolles's brother was transferred from the Bishopric of Digne
to that of Chambry, and Bonaparte nominated for his successor the brother
of General Miollis, who was a curate of Brignoles, in the diocese of Aix.
This curate had not only been one of the first to throw up his letters of
priesthood at the Jacobin Club at Aix, but had also sacrilegiously denied
the divinity of the Christian religion, and proposed, in imitation of
Parisian atheists, the worship of a Goddess of Reason in a common
prostitute with whom he lived. The notoriety of these abominations made
even his parishioners at Brignoles unwilling to go to church, and to
regard him as their pastor, though several of them had been imprisoned,
fined, and even transported as fanatics, or as refractory.

During the negotiation with Cardinal Fesch last year, the Pope had been
promised, among other things, that, for the future, his conscience should
not be wounded by having presented to him for the prelacy any persons but
those of the purest morals of the French Empire; and that all his
objections should be attended to, in case of promotions; his scruples
removed, or his refusal submitted to. When Cardinal Fesch demanded His
Holiness's Bull for the curate Miollis, the Cardinal Secretary of State,
Gonsalv