tyranny, he would have joined
those deputies who, on the 9th of November, 1799, in the sitting at St.
Cloud, demanded a decree of outlawry against him. If the present quarrel
between these two brothers were sifted to the bottom, perhaps it would be
found to originate more from Lucien's Republicanism than from his
marriage.

I know, with all France and Europe, that Lucien's youth has been very
culpable; that he has committed many indiscretions, much injustice, many
imprudences, many errors, and, I fear, even some crimes. I know that he
has been the most profligate among the profligate, the most debauched
among libertines, the most merciless among the plunderers, and the most
perverse among rebels. I know that he is accused of being a
Septembrizer; of having murdered one wife and poisoned another; of having
been a spy, a denouncer, a persecutor of innocent persons in the Reign of
Terror. I know that he is accused of having fought his brothers-in-law;
of having ill-used his mother, and of an incestuous commerce with his own
sisters.

I have read and heard of these and other enormous accusations, and far be
it from me to defend, extenuate, or even deny them. But suppose all this
infamy to be real, to be proved, to be authenticated, which it never has
been, and, to its whole extent, I am persuaded, never can be--what are
the cruel and depraved acts of which Lucien has been accused to the
enormities and barbarities of which Napoleon is convicted? Is the
poisoning a wife more criminal than the poisoning a whole hospital of
wounded soldiers; or the assisting to kill some confined persons,
suspected of being enemies, more atrocious than the massacre in cold
blood of thousands of disarmed prisoners? Is incest with a sister more
shocking to humanity than the well-known unnatural pathic but I will not
continue the disgusting comparison. As long as Napoleon is unable to
acquit himself of such barbarities and monstrous crimes, he has no right
to pronounce Lucien unworthy to be called his brother; nor have
Frenchmen, as long as they obey the former as a Sovereign, or the
Continent, as long as it salutes him as such, any reason to despise the
latter for crimes which lose their enormity when compared to the horrid
perpetrations of his Imperial brother.

An elderly lady, a relation of Lucien's wife, and a person in whose
veracity and morality I have the greatest confidence, and for whom he
always had evinced more regard than