doubt. The last words Madame Louis said to me, in showing me a princely
crown, richly set with diamonds, and given her by her brother-in-law,
Napoleon, were, "Alas! grandeur is not always happiness, nor the most
elevated the most fortunate lot."




LETTER XVII.

PARIS, August, 1805.

My LORD:--The arrival of the Pope in this country was certainly a grand
epoch, not only in the history of the Revolution, but in the annals of
Europe. The debates in the Sacred College for and against this journey,
and for and against his coronation of Bonaparte, are said to have been
long as well as violent, and arranged according to the desires of
Cardinal Fesch only by the means of four millions of livres distributed
apropos among its pious members. Of this money the Cardinals Mattei,
Pamphili, Dugnani, Maury, Pignatelli, Roverella, Somaglia, Pacca,
Brancadoro, Litta, Gabrielli, Spina, Despuig, and Galefli, are said to
have shared the greatest part; and from the most violent
anti-Bonapartists, they instantly became the strenuous adherents of
Napoleon the First, who, of course, cannot be ignorant of their real
worth.

The person entrusted by Bonaparte and Talleyrand to carry on at Rome the
intrigue which sent Pius VII. to cross the Alps was Cardinal Fesch,
brother of Madame Letitia Bonaparte by the side of her mother, who, in a
second marriage, chose a pedlar of the name of Nicolo Fesch, for her