Duroc, and share the spoil. At the appointed hour Bonaparte's agent
arrived, and was completely the dupe of these adventurers, who plundered
him of twelve hundred thousand livres. Though not many days passed
before he discovered the imposition, prudence prevented him from
denouncing the impostors; and this blunder would have remained a secret
between himself, Bonaparte, and Talleyrand, had not the unusual expenses
of Caumartin excited the suspicion of the Russian Police Minister, who
soon discovered the source from which they had flowed. De Gausac had the
imprudence to return to this capital last spring, and is now shut up in
the Temple, where he probably will be forgotten.

As this loss was more ascribed to the negligence of Madame Bonoeil than
to the mismanagement of Duroc, or his want of penetration, his reception
at the Tuileries, though not so gracious as on his return from Berlin,
nineteen months before, was, however, such as convinced him that if he
had not increased, he had at the same time not lessened, the confidence
of his master; and, indeed, shortly afterwards, Bonaparte created him
first prefect of his palace, and procured him for a wife the only
daughter of a rich Spanish banker. Rumour, however, says that Bonaparte
was not quite disinterested when he commanded and concluded this match,
and that the fortune of Madame Duroc has paid for the expensive supper of
her husband with Count de S-----tz at St. Petersburg.




LETTER II.

PARIS, August, 1805.