distinguishing himself. He was not one of those select few whom Napoleon
brought with him to Europe in 1799, but returned first to France in 1801,
when he was nominated a general of division and commander of this
capital, a place he resigned last year to General Murat.

His despotic and cruel behaviour while commander of Paris made him not
much regretted. Fouche lost in him, indeed, an able support, but none of
us here ever experienced from him justice, much less protection. As with
all other of our modern public functionaries, without money nothing was
obtained from him. It required as much for not doing any harm as if, in
renouncing his usual vexatious oppressions, he had conferred benefits. He
was much suspected of being, with Fouche, the patron of a gang of street
robbers and housebreakers, who, in the winter of 1803, infested this
capital, and who, when finally discovered, were screened from justice and
suffered to escape punishment.

I will tell you what I personally have seen of him. Happening one
evening to enter the rooms at Frascati, where the gambling-tables are
kept, I observed him, undressed, out of regimentals, in company with at
young man, who afterwards avowed himself an aide-de-camp of this general,
and who was playing with rouleaux of louis d'or, supposed to contain
fifty each, at Rouge et Noir. As long as he lost, which he did several
times, he took up the rouleau on the table, and gave another from his
pocket. At last he won, when he asked the bankers to look at their loss,
and count the money in his rouleau before they paid him. On opening it,
they found it contained one hundred bank-notes of one thousand livres
each--folded in a manner to resemble the form and size of louis d'or. The
bankers refused to pay, and applied to the company whether they were not
in the right to do so, after so many rouleaux had been changed by the
person who now required such an unusual sum in such an unusual manner.