confirmed and advanced him in the good opinion of Napoleon. He married the niece of Josephine; and, upon the elevation of her husband (thus be come his own near relative) to the Consulate, he was nominated to a place, which is, in France, one of very high importance and emolument.-that of Director-General of the Post-office. Subsequently he was raised to the dignity of Councillor of State, and invested with the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, and the title of Commander of the order of the Re-union. These things were sufficient to bind Lavalette for ever to the fortunes of Buonaparte; and the known intimacy of their connection was such, that he lost his place of the post-office as an immediate consequence on the first abdication at Fontainbleau. Although the king was thus spared the task of removing him, he did not think fit to undo the arrangement of the provisional government which had preceded his accession, and Lavalette remained out of office down to the day when his majesty had resolved on making his es cape to Ghent; during the whole of which time, however, the royal munificence allowed the ex-director-gene ral to retain the fourth part of the salary of his office, by way of pension. The share which he took in the events of the usurper's return was supposed to have been so conspicuous, as to justify his being made one of the few exceptions to the rule of mercy followed by the king after his second restoration. Nor, in the sequel, did it appear that this resolution with regard to Lavalette had been unjustly, or even rash. ly adopted.

His trial came on, on the 22d of November, before the Court of Assize for the department of the Seine. It was proved against him, that, at six o'clock on the morning of the 20th of March, he came to the post office, and beating with his cane upon the floor of

the hall, exclaimed hastily, "I take possession in the name of the empe ror." The Count de Ferrand, who filled, under the king's authority, the place anciently held by Lavalette, found but too much reason to suspect that it was now too late for him to make any resistance; he therefore secured his own private papers, and left the hotel, where Lavalette immediately resumed all the functions of office. He countermanded the departure of the mails containing letters from the ministry and the prefect of the depart ment of the Seine, and prevented, by the same means, the circulation in the provinces of the Moniteur for the day, which contained the parting declaration of Louis. He refused to Count Ferrand, and even to his countess, the means of following the king to the frontier, and granted them passports to leave Paris, only on condition that they should take the road to Orleans. Having summoned a meeting of all the functionaries of the post-office, he formally gave them notice of his having resumed the direction, and changed immediately, in their presence, some of the arrangements of his predecessor in regard to their own body. He distributed by couriers, in various directious, a billet, intimating the near approach of Napoleon, the tranquillity of the metropolis, and, rather inconsistently, in the same breath, its enthu siasm. This paper is concluded with the usual formula of Vive l'Empereur, and signed, "Le Conseiller d'Etat, Directeur-General des Postes, Comte Lavalette." Lastly, he dispatched, early in the day, a courier to Buonaparte himself, who met the adventurer at Fontainbleau, and delivered into his hand a letter from Lavalette. What the contents of this letter might be is not known, but its substance may be guessed from the reception which Napoleon gave to it. "It is well," said he to the messenger; and then turning

with a smile to his attendants" So they are expecting me at Paris." The courier received no written reply, but a verbal message, commanding Lavalette to be in waiting at the Thuilleries at night, and to conduct thither the Duke of Bassano.

In addition to these things, it was proved, that for several days previous to the memorable 20th of March, Lavalette had lodged not in his own house, but in that of the sister-in-law of Napoleon, formerly queen of Holland, who had been permitted by the king to remain in Paris, under the name of Duchess of St Leu, and who, as it was afterwards suspected, with much appearance of reason, had formed in that capital the centre of many dark intrigues, inimical to the prince to whose clemency she owed this indulgence. Of what nature those intrigues had been, has never been precisely ascertained by the French government, or has at least never been made known to the public; but in them, whatever they were, there can be no doubt that Lavalette had a principal part. The prisoner was indeed formally accused of having kept up a clandestine correspondence with Buonaparte during his residence at Elba; but of this proof failed on the day of trial, excepting only in regard to one letter, which had been entrusted to a private traveller at the end of November 1814, but which, as Lavalette asserted, had contained nothing more than the expressions of goodwill customary to be exchanged among relatives at the commencement of a new year. The date of the letter somewhat contradicted this statement; but however that might have been, there could be little difficulty in the maintenance of a correspondence, by way of confidential couriers, between the ex-emperor and his favourite ; nor was it to be supposed that those who had rendered themselves instrumental to the purposes of such an intercourse,

VOL. 1X. PART I.

should be ready or willing witnesses for the betrayal of its history. As it was, these points were little discussed on the trial; and after some deliberation, the jury found him guilty, on the more satisfactory evidence which we have already narrated. He appealed from their sentence to the Court of Cassation, but there his petition was at once rejected, and he was finally ordered for execution on the 21st of December.

The strictest orders had been given by the police that no one should be admitted to see the prisoner, with the exception of a very few individuals, and that each one of these should make the visit alone. Notwithstanding this order, however, on the 20th of December, the wife, the daughter, and an aged female domestic of Lavalette, were permitted by the gaoler to enter together the apartment in which he was confined. Here dinner and coffee were served up to the prisoner and his visitors by Eberle, a turnkey, who had but a few weeks before been employed in similar offices about the person of Ney. There is no doubt that this man had wanted fortitude to resist the temptations to which he had been exposed, and that he was now entirely at the devotion of Lavalette. A confidential valet of the count remained in the hall of the prison while his mistress was in her husband's apartment; and by the joint management of this person and Eberle, every thing was arranged so as most to favour the execution of the scheme devised within. After dinner, the party were left for a time by themselves, as if to allow leisure for a last farewell. At last the bell was rung, and the chair of Madame Lavalette was ordered. Immediately afterwards, the company passed sobbing through the hall, while, from delicacy or from design, neither gaoler nor attendant thought of strictly examining their persons. Had they done so, they would have

G

discovered, under the dress of the countess, Lavalette the prisoner himself, who had exchanged clothes with his wife, after the example of Lord Nithsdale, in the year 1715, and who, like that nobleman, found eventual safety in the disguise. Stepping hastily into the chair prepared for the countess, he proceeded in it for a few hundred yards, and then quitting it, disappeared among the busy streets of Paris, while his place was taken by his daugh. ter. In the course of a few minutes the alarm was given in the prison, Madam de Lavalette having, by accident, been discovered by one of the attendants not engaged in the plot, and the chair was pursued and overtaken, but the prisoner had already deserted it. To discover him, the utmost diligence of the police was exerted in vain for seventeen days, while the heroic exertion of his wife was the theme of universal admiration; and while, partly from his own previous character, but more perhaps from sympathy with her feelings, it became almost an universal wish that the fugitive, who had so happily effected his escape from prison, might, in the end, traverse with equal safety the frontiers of the country whose laws he had offended.

Wherever Lavalette was concealed, (for that secret had not yet been discovered,) the intelligence of the interest commonly expressed for his for tunes must soon have been conveyed to him. Among those who were most loud and incautious in their method of speaking concerning him, were certain Englishmen then resident in Paris, who had already excited some little notice by the part they took in somewhat similar discussions at the time of the trial and execution of Mareschal Ney. To these, as more likely than any of his own countrymen to lend effectual assistance to his plan of ulterior escape, Lavalette determined to reveal himself. Mr Bruce, a young gentle

man of fortune, (of the same family with the illustrious traveller of that name,) was the first to whom he applied. This was done by means of an unsigned letter, the writer of which, after extolling the generosity of Mr Bruce's dispositions, stated, that it was now in his power to gratify them in a manner of all others the most delightful, and concluded with explaining the situation of Lavalette. Bruce returned no immediate reply, but after ha ving consulted with his friends, and arranged every thing in the manner which appeared most advisable, he appointed the evening of the 7th of January for Lavalette to meet him at the apartment of Captain Hutchison, a nephew of the general of that name, and long connected with Bruce by community of opinions, and intimacy of companionship. Lavalette came to Hutchison's lodgings at the hour appointed, where, besides his host and Bruce, he was met by Sir Robert Wilson, the well-known historian of the British expedition to Egypt; for the opinions of this officer, earliest and chiefly celebrated for the zeal with which he charged on Buonaparte the accusations of having poisoned his own wounded soldiers, and massacred in cold blood his prisoners of war in Syria,

these opinions, once so fiercely hostile to the whole character and history of revolutionary France, had of late undergone so remarkable a change, that his younger countrymen, Bruce and Hutchinson, scrupled not, in spite of his high rank in the British army, to request his personal assistance in the adventure wherein they had become engaged; nor did they find in Sir Robert either an unwilling or an ineffectual ally. On the contrary, he made use of his acquaintance with the English ambassador to procure a passport for Lavalette, under the assumed name and character of an English general, and had prepared himself to perfect the

of their defence, these crude and injudicious dogmas and assertions, and indeed, by the whole tone of their addresses to the tribunal, our countrymen weakened not a little the original strength of their case. They should have been satisfied with their own stations, and remembered, that the respect due to them as gentlemen, might not perhaps be so liberally extended to them as politicians. When they departed from their character of private cavaliers, and assumed to themselves the character and rights of great and leading genuises, fitted and entitled to rectify the mistakes of ordinary and official statesmen, they subjected themselves to a standard of scrutiny, which they might easily have escaped. Their conduct, if examined solely by the test which they had voluntarily imposed upon themselves, must have appeared sufficiently inexcuseable, so far as the character of England was concerned. The world at large were prepared to listen to the Duke of Wellington's interpretation of the capitulation of Paris, with at least as much respect as to that of Sir Robert Wilson. And, whatever opinion might be entertained with regard to the French government, not many were inclined to recognise the claims of a few English travellers, who chose to erect themselves, over their bowl of punch, into a tribunal corrective as well as inspective of its measures. In every civilized country, it is recognized as an offence of no ordinary magnitude, to oppose the execution, and therefore weaken the authority, of the laws, by contributing to the escape of a convicted criminal. Lavalette had been found guilty by a French jury, of a crime which could scarcely be regarded as a slight one by men of high honour, because it involved in its essence the mingled guilt of ingratitude and perjury. Had Wilson, Hutchison, and Bruce, been found

guilty of assisting such a criminal in his original escape from prison, their conduct would have been regarded, with reason, as a great and inexcuseable trespass on the hospitality of France. But the part which they did act, in spite of their own imprudence, was universally felt and acknowledged to have been one of comparatively trivial offence.

At the commencement of the trial,

our countrymen requested, that, as in England a foreigner, accused of any crime, is entitled to be tried by a jury half English, and half of foreigners, a similar privilege might be extended to them in France. But this indulgence was refused, as without precedent in the history of the French courts of law. Nor had the Englishmen any occasion to complain of the severity of the French jury or judges; for their decision, taking into view all the circumstances of the case, was certainly as lenient as could have been expected, or almost desired. They were found guilty of aiding Lavalette in his escape from France, and condemned to three months of imprisonment in Paris. Punishments of the same species were inflicted on the functionaries of the prison; but Madame Lavalette, her daughter, and the aged domestic, were very properly dismissed without condemnation, as having done no more than their several situations justified.

During their progress in France, these things could not fail to excite a very great share of interest in England; indeed we scarcely think any foreign event of the year gave rise to so much discussion. At first the impression was strongly and unmixedly in favour of our countrymen; for their adventure bore on its face the marks of a generosity and oblivion of self, which never fail to excite a commanding influence over the hearts and judge. ments of Englishmen. Subsequently,