me, "Bonaparte always been encompassed by troops of this description, he
might now have sung hymns as a saint in heaven, but he would never have
reigned as an Emperor upon earth." This indiscreet remark was heard by
Louis Bonaparte, and on the next morning Kellerman received orders to
join the army in Hanover, where he was put under the command of a general
younger than himself. He would have been still more severely punished,
had not his father, the Senator (General Kellerman), been in so great
favour at the Court of St. Cloud, and so much protected by Duroc, who had
made, in 1792, his first campaign under this officer, then
commander-in-chief of the army of the Ardennes.

When this devout assembly separated, which was by courtesy an hour
earlier than usual, I expected every moment to hear a chorus of
horse-laughs, because I clearly perceived that all of them were tired of
their assumed parts, and, with me, inclined to be gay at the expense of
their neighbours. But they all remembered also that they were watched by
spies, and that an imprudent look or an indiscreet word, gaiety instead
of gravity, noise when silence was commanded, might be followed by an
airing in the wilderness of Cayenne. They, therefore, all called out,
"Coachman, to our hotel!" as if to say, "We will to-day, in compliment to
the new-born Christian zeal of our Sovereigns, finish our evening as
piously as we have begun it." But no sooner were they out of sight of
the palace than they hurried to the scenes of dissipation, all
endeavouring, in the debauchery and excesses so natural to them, to
forget their unnatural affectation and hypocrisy.

Well you know the standard of the faith even of the members of the
Bonaparte family. Two days before this Christian circle at Madame
Napoleon's, Madame de Chateaureine, with three other ladies, visited the
Princesse Borghese. Not seeing a favourite parrot they had often