tribune, but in 1804 disgraced him, because he wished that the Duc d'
Enghien had rather been secretly poisoned in Baden than publicly
condemned and privately executed in France.

Our present Minister at the Court of Copenhagen, D' Aguesseau, has no
virtues to boast of, but also no crimes to blush for. With inferior
capacity, he is only considered by Talleyrand as an inferior intriguer,
employed in a country ruled by an inferior policy, neither feared nor
esteemed by our Government. His secretary, Desaugiers the elder, is our
real and confidential firebrand in the North, commissioned to keep
burning those materials of combustion which Grouvelle and others of our
incendiaries have lighted and illuminated in Holstein, Denmark, Sweden,
and Norway.




LETTER XX.

PARIS, October, 1805.

MY LORD:--The insatiable avarice of all the members of the Bonaparte
family has already and frequently been mentioned; some of our
philosophers, however, pretend that ambition and vanity exclude from the
mind of Napoleon Bonaparte the passion of covetousness; that he pillages
only to get money to pay his military plunderers, and hoards treasures
only to purchase slaves, or to recompense the associates and instruments
of his authority.

Whether their assertions be just or not, I will not take upon myself to