and shut up in the Temple, where he still remains. Four other agents of
inferior petty German Princes have also been arrested for offering the
Orders of their Sovereigns for sale.

A Captain Rouvais, who received six wounds in his campaign under Pichegru
in 1794, wore the star of the Legion of Honour without being nominated a
knight. He has been tried by a military commission, deprived of his
pension, and condemned to four years' imprisonment in irons. He proved
that he had presented fourteen petitions to Bonaparte for obtaining this
mark of distinction, but in vain; while hundreds of others, who had
hardly seen an enemy, or, at the most, made but one campaign, or been
once wounded, had succeeded in their demands. As soon as sentence had
been pronounced against him, he took a small pistol from his pocket, and
shot himself through the head, saying, "Some one else will soon do the
same for Bonaparte."

A cobbler, of the name of Matthieu, either in a fit of madness or from
hatred to the new order of things, decorated himself with the large
riband of the Legion of Honour, and had an old star fastened on his coat.
Thus accoutred, he went into the Palais Royal, in the middle of the day,
got upon a chair, and began to speak to his audience of the absurdity of
true republicans not being on a level, even under an Emperor, and putting
on, like him, all his ridiculous ornaments. "We are here," said he,
"either all grand officers, or there exist no grand officers at all; we
have all fought and paid for liberty, and for the Revolution, as much as
Bonaparte, and have, therefore, the same right and claim with him." Here
a police agent and some gendarmes interrupted his eloquence by taking him
into custody. When Fouche asked him what he meant by such rebellious
behaviour, he replied that it was only a trial to see whether destiny had
intended him to become an Emperor or to remain a cobbler. On the next