birth nor my lack of fortune. "I have only," said I, "my sword and the good-will of the general; and in a fortnight I must bid you adieu. Open your heart as freely as I do mine. I feel that I could love you with all my soul; but this on one side only will not suffice. If this union is not to your taste, confide in me frankly, and I engage to find a pretext for breaking it off without your secret transpiring, or your being tormented on the subject."

'Without raising her eyes, which had been bent on the ground during the whole of my address, she answered it by a timid smile, and by putting into my hand the bouquet which she carried in hers. I embraced her, and we returned slowly to the party. Eight days after, we were married, not only civilly at the municipality, but in the chapel of a convent by a little, nonjuring, concealed priest, a thing at that time all but absolutely prohibited, but on which Emilie insisted, for her piety was as sincere as it was fervent. When a very few days after, I quitted her for Toulon, it was without a formal farewell, which would have been too painful for both. Eighteen months later, I returned to falsify my own evil auguries. Of eight aides-de-camp, four had perished-Julien and Sulkowski murdered by the Arabs, Croisier killed at St Jean d'Acre, and Guibert at the battle of Aboukir. Duroc and Eugène Beauharnais were severely wounded; Mulin and I alone escaped unscathed.'

We are left to gather from other sources what Lavalette's modesty forbade him to mention, that this impunity was the more wonderful, from his being foremost in all the most perilous encounters of the romantic Egyptian campaigns, during which he rarely left Bonaparte, at whose side he fought at the battles of the Pyramids and Mount Tabor, as well as at the murderous siege of St Jean d'Acre. The prominent part borne in these conflicts by our gallant countrymen has made them matter of British history, and would render repetition of their details useless. A few anecdotes only of a more personal nature, from the graphic pages of Lavalette's memoirs, who to the close of life loved to dwell on scenes which his education and temperament rendered doubly interesting, may be preserved from oblivion.

On one occasion he was ordered on a mission of no small difficulty and danger to Ali Pasha, whose character of Djezzar, or 'the butcher,' and his notorious want of faith and humanity, rendered the fate of any envoy to his barbaric court extremely doubtful. Fortunately, the pasha was absent; but Lavalette, though much relieved, had only escaped one danger to encounter another. Being ordered to sea, for the purpose of bringing tidings of the French fleet expected on the coast, he was chased and nearly captured by an English frigate, ere he could get on board L'Orient to communicate with the commander-in-chief, Admiral Brueys. He was not even here in security, or in a creditable situation, and he was anxious to leave the vessel, which had already landed a large part of the forces it had brought from France. After a long conversation with

the admiral, 'I walked,' says he, 'alone during the night up and down this immense vessel of 130 guns, without meeting a single soul. I could have fancied myself in the cathedral of Notre Dame; and what added to the singularity of this solitude was, that, before being reduced by the disembarkation, its complement, now reduced to 600 persons, had been 2145! The more I contemplated this vast half-manned citadel, the less desire I felt to take part in the conflict. In fact, not being a marine officer, my evident duty was to rejoin the general. In the event of a victory, there would be found plenty of willing messengers, while I was sure of much blame and little pity if, in case of disaster, I should be made prisoner or killed. I therefore went to the admiral and said: "Upon mature reflection, I have made up my mind to proceed and give an account of my mission, and of the position in which I have found you."'

Having no reason to oppose this resolution, the admiral gave him a skiff to take him to Rosetta; but during the voyage, he had ample leisure to repent his decision. The swell,' he says, 'created by the strife of the sea and the Nile was tremendous,' and a violent storm came on to add to the danger. One vessel, laden with provisions, was lost before their eyes; another, rather stouter built, still struggled on, and, by charitably casting them a tow-rope, saved their little craft from being swamped in the waves or hurled upon the breakers. Seventeen hours,' says Lavalette, 'were thus passed, when the sea having calmed a little, I insisted on pushing forward for the mouth of the Nile. The sailors were very unwilling; but I was seconded by the officer commanding the boat, a young man full of energy and intrepidity. The first wave that came after us covered and well-nigh sunk us. One pull more was necessary; and though the men were as pale as death with fear, it was made, and we reached Rosetta.'

The good-fortune of our hero was not yet exhausted. While he achieved in safety the passage up the Nile, his less fortunate brother aide-de-camp, Julien, was massacred during the night by the Arabs, with all his escort. By the victory achieved by Nelson off Aboukir between the 1st and 3d of August 1798, the French fleet was annihilated, and the land forces of Bonaparte were necessarily deprived of any immediate succours from France. The manner in which the tidings of the defeat were received and communicated by Napoleon, is thus related by its eye-witness:

'It was in returning from beating the Mamelukes at Salahich that the commander-in-chief learned the disaster of our fleet at Aboukir. The news had been brought by an aide-de-camp of General Kleber's, whose horse being knocked up, he had written a few details in an open letter which I took from the hands of a peasant. I read it, and begged the general to come aside a little from the midst of his staff. I then gave him the note, and when he had read it: 'You know the contents,' said he; of course you will

keep them secret.' We then returned to Balbeys, where breakfast was already on the table, and every one in the highest spirits, the troops having retaken from the Mamelukes the rich merchandise of which they had recently plundered the caravan. The soldiers would have sold them on the spot for half nothing, but Bonaparte strictly forbade any officer to become a purchaser, till there should be an opportunity of disposing of them for a fair price by the captors_on their arrival at Cairo. In the middle of breakfast, the commanderin-chief said to his guests: 'Well, gentlemen, you say you like this country; it is very fortunate, as we have no longer any fleet to take us back to Europe!' The news was received with the same sangfroid with which it was told; every one's mind was made up, and there was no more about it.'

Of a piece with his former escapes was the charmed life which Lavalette seemed to bear in the midst of a six weeks' sojourn in Alexandria, when the plague raged with such virulence, that two days after an inspector-general and ten assistants had arrived there, one alone survived; and a secretary, who had merely, in signing some billets for the troops, come in contact for a moment with an infected paper, was a dead man in fifteen hours; while surgeons, physicians, and hospital attendants were successively swept away. The escape of one alone of these last, who habitually washed himself with oil, confirmed the well-known fact of the impunity enjoyed by the oil-porters of Constantinople.

A melancholy example of the summary punishments inflicted by oriental functionaries came under the notice of Lavalette, while deputed by his general, then absent, to accompany the aga of police in a tour of inspection through the streets of Cairo. The aga, a Greek, was as usual accompanied by the executioner and his myrmidons, the sight of whom sufficed to clear the streets of all their petty traffickers, and of all such persons as had any peccadilloes on their conscience. While stopping a moment in front of a café, a man was dragged violently to the feet of the cadi's horse, who, after a very brief interrogatory, replied to by the trembling criminal, gave a slight horizontal wave with his hand, on which the cavalcade moved on. 'Something in the cadi's gesture had struck me,' says Lavalette,' and turning my head after we had got on a few paces, I saw a group assembled before the coffee-house, and galloped back to the spot. Imagine my horror when I saw a decapitated body, and the executioner very quietly putting the head into his bag! "What does this mean?" said I to the aga. "Oh," replied he coolly, "the fellow was a ringleader in the late revolt, and had hitherto contrived to escape me!" I made a point of his reporting the case to the general, and very likely the man was guilty; but I could not help suspecting that my presence, and the desire to give me a specimen of Ottoman inflexibility, cost the poor wretch his life. It must be confessed, however, that such examples are not

unfrequent, and that the cadi never moves unaccompanied by the executioner.'

At the memorable siege of St Jean d'Acre, fresh instances were afforded of the good-fortune of Bonaparte and his companion Lavalette, in escaping dangers which carried off thousands around them. While one of the shells, thrown with unerring precision from the fortress, buried itself harmlessly in the earth at the very feet of Bonaparte, and in the midst of his staff, another exploded not far off, among eleven soldiers lying on the ground at their breakfast, not one of whom survived the explosion a single instant.

MIDDLE LIFE AND DANGERS.

After Bonaparte's return to Europe, he deputed Lavalette to act as plenipotentiary to Saxony. On this expedition he was accompanied by his young wife, Emilie, who, while in Germany, had the pleasing satisfaction of vindicating the ladies of France from the then too well-founded imputation of shamelessness in dress and behaviour, by the retiring delicacy of her manners and rigid propriety of her costume. Lavalette afterwards visited Berlin, where the queen and court loaded his wife with flattering distinctions. Returning to France, Emilie was appointed mistress of the robes to her aunt Josephine, and this office she held until the divorce of her respected relative. She now retired into private life. Lavalette, however, continued in the service and confidence of Napoleon, by whom he was appointed to the onerous office of director-general of the posts, to which were successively added the dignities of councillor of state, and grand cross of the Legion of Honour, and finally the title of count. Lavalette discharged the offices so imposed on him for a period of twelve years, and all parties agree in bearing testimony to the honourableness of his conduct in the trying situation in which he was placed. While at the head of the post-office, he abolished the base practice of opening letters for purposes of state or private curiosity, and for this reform he drew on himself the hatred of many in power, and especially the relentless and treacherous Fouché.

It had not been without misgivings and remonstrances that Count Lavalette beheld the latter steps of Napoleon's ambitious and ill-advised career; and however these might interrupt the cordiality of their intercourse, the emperor never failed in any emergency to resort for truth, or in any disaster for consolation, to his disinterested counsellor. The confidence reposed in his integrity by that undoubted judge of character, Bonaparte, may be gathered from his having insisted on depositing with Lavalette, on the eve of his departure on the unfortunate Russian expedition, bills on the treasury for a million and a half of francs, with directions to convert

them into gold, and keep them until further orders. At a loss, he says, how to secrete such a mass of bullion, Lavalette had made, through an artillery officer of his acquaintance, boxes exactly resembling gigantic volumes, and lettered Ancient and Modern History, each capable of containing 30,000 francs, and put them into his bookcase. When the emperor came back, he seemed to have forgotten all about this money, and returned to Germany without giving any precise orders as to its disposal, only saying, when pressed on the subject: 'We'll see when I come back.' 'At length,' says Lavalette, 'when, some months after, he was leaving Paris for his final campaign in France, I insisted on his ridding me of a deposit I could no longer be responsible for, amid the events with which Paris was threatened. "Well," said he to me, "can't you hide it in your house in the country?" It was in vain I represented to him that this château, situated on the high-road from Versailles, was liable to be pillaged and occupied by adverse parties, and that the slightest imprudence might betray the treasure. He would not listen to me, and there was nothing for it but to obey. I had a faithful steward, whom I employed for several nights in digging a hole under the flooring of a closet, which, after depositing beneath it the fifty-four volumes of a work, sure, if discovered, to be highly relished, we carefully replaced the floor. Shortly after, the chateau was occupied by 300 Prussians, fifteen of whom slept in the room, a plank of whose floor they had only to raise with their sabres to come upon these heaps of gold. My life during the two months they stayed was one perpetual agony, lest they should find out all, and I only breathed when they were gone.' What ultimately became of the money we have not heard.

Pressed upon on all sides, and with a tottering power, Napoleon found it advisable to abdicate the throne of France in April 1814, and to retire to the island of Elba, where it was arranged he should continue to enjoy the title of sovereign and an income of two millions of francs. On this dissolution of the imperial power, and the restoration of Louis XVIII., Lavalette, with the greater number of functionaries, civil and military, gave in their adhesion to the new dynasty; and to that dynasty they might have continued faithful, had it been faithful to itself, or cultivated the confidence and affections of the nation. The Bourbons, however, as was observed, had learned nothing and forgotten nothing. They were neither respected nor loved by the French people, while the discord of the European powers at the congress of Vienna disposed many to anticipate a new revolution in France. Taking advantage of the general dissensions, Napoleon once more appeared on the scene. Quitting his mock empire of Elba, he landed in France on the Ist of March 1815, and with what adherents could be collected, marched on to Paris, which he reached on the 13th; Louis XVIII. having previously fled an event which, morally speaking, may be said to No. 61.

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