racle, "she should have petitioned the
First Consul for a permission to return, to France before she entered it;
but out of regard for you, if she is prudent, she will not, I daresay, be
troubled by our Government."

"I should be sorry if she was not," replied the Count, with a significant
look; and here this grand affair ended, to the great entertainment of
those foreign agents who dared to smile or to laugh.

LETTER XXV.

PARIS, October, 1805.

MY LORD:--The Legion of Honour, though only proclaimed upon Bonaparte's
assumption of the Imperial rank, dates from the first year of his
consulate. To prepare the public mind for a progressive elevation of
himself, and for consequential distinctions among all classes of his
subjects, he distributed among the military, arms of honour, to which
were attached precedence and privileges granted by him, and, therefore,
liable to cease with his power or life. The number of these arms
increased in proportion to the approach of the period fixed for the
change of his title and the erection of his throne. When he judged them
numerous enough to support his changes, he made all these wearers of arms
of honour knights. Never before were so many chevaliers created en
masse; they amounted to no less than twenty-two thousand four hundred,
distributed in the different corps of different armies, but principally
in the army of England. To these were afterwards joined five thousand
nine hundred civil functionaries, men of letters, artists, etc. To
remove, however, all ideas of equality, even among the members of the
Legion of Honour, they were divided into four classes--grand officers,
commanders, officers, and simple legionaries.

Every one who has observed Bonaparte's incessant endeavours to intrude
himself among the Sovereigns of Europe, was convinced that he would
cajole, or force, as many of them as he could into his revolutionary
knighthood; but I heard men, who are not ignorant of the selfishness and
corruption of our times, deny the possibility of any independent Prince
suffering his name to be registered among criminals of every description,
from the thief who picked the pockets of his fellow citizens in the
street, down to the regicide who sat in judgment and condemned his King;
from the plunderers who have laid waste provinces, republics, and
kingdoms, down to the assassins who shot, drowned, or guillotined their
countrymen en masse. For my part, I never had but one op