violating the laws, on supplying their inefficacy and counteracting their
partiality.




LETTER XXXVI.

PARIS, September, 1805.

MY LORD:--Bonaparte is now the knight of more Royal Orders than any other
Sovereign in Europe, and were he to put them on all at once, their
ribands would form stuff enough for a light summer coat of as many
different colours as the rainbow. The Kings of Spain, of Naples, of
Prussia, of Portugal, and of Etruria have admitted him a
knight-companion, as well as the Electors of Bavaria, Hesse, and Baden,
and the Pope of Rome. In return he has appointed these Princes his grand
officers of HIS Legion of Honour, the highest rank of his newly
instituted Imperial Order. It is even said that some of these Sovereigns
have been honoured by him with the grand star and broad riband of the
Order of His Iron Crown of the Kingdom of Italy.

Before Napoleon's departure for Milan last spring, Talleyrand intimated
to the members of the foreign diplomatic corps here, that their presence
would be agreeable to the Emperor of the French at his coronation at
Milan as a King of Italy. In the preceding summer a similar hint, or
order, had been given by him for a diplomatic trip to Aix-la-Chapelle,
and all Their Excellencies set a-packing instantly; but some legitimate
Sovereigns, having since discovered that it was indecent for their
representatives to be crowding the suite of an insolently and proudly