carried on against me since I had left Hamburg by one whose ambition
aspired to the Viceroyalty of Poland. On that, as on many other similar
occasions, the Duc de Rovigo advocated my cause with Napoleon. We agreed
that it would be best to await the arrival of the letter which M. Bouvier
had announced. Three weeks elapsed, and the letter did not appear. The
Duc de Rovigo, therefore, told me that I must have been misinformed.
However, I was certain that M. Bouvier would not have sent me the
information on slight grounds, and I therefore supposed that the project
had only been delayed. I was not wrong in my conjecture, for at length
the letter arrived. To what a depth of infamy men can descend! The
letter was from a man whom I had known at Hamburg, whom I had obliged,
whom I had employed as a spy. His epistle was a miracle of impudence.
After relating some extraordinary transactions which he said had taken
place between us, and which all bore the stamp of falsehood, he requested
me to send him by return of post the sum of 60,000 francs on account of
what I had promised him for some business he executed in England by the
direction of M. de Talleyrand, General Rapp, and myself. Such miserable
wretches are often caught in the snares they spread for others. This was
the case in the present instance, for the fellow had committed, the
blunder of fixing upon the year 1802 as the period of this pretended
business in England, that is to say, two years before my appointment as
Minister-Plenipotentiary to the Hanse Towns. This anachronism was not
the only one I discovered in the letter.

I took a copy of the letter, and immediately carried the original to the
Duc de Rovigo, as had been agreed between us. When I waited on the
Minister he was just preparing to go to the Emperor. He took with him
the letter which I brought, and also the letter which announced its
arrival. As the Duc de Rovigo entered the audience-chamber Napoleon
advanced to meet him, and apostrophised him thus: "Well, I have learned
fine things of your Bourrienne, whom you are always defending." The fact
was, the Emperor had already received a copy of the letter, which had
been opened at the Hamburg post-office. The Due de Rovigo told the
Emperor that he had long known what his Majesty had communicated to him.
He then entered into a full explanation of the intrigue, of which it was
wished to render me the victim, and proved to him the more easily the
falsehood of my ac