s assured me
that, had it not been for Napoleon's singular inclination for his
youthful stepdaughter, he would have divorced his wife the first year of
his consulate, and that indirect proposals on that subject had already
been made her by Talleyrand. It was then reported that Bonaparte had his
eyes fixed upon a Russian Princess, and that from the friendship which
the late Emperor Paul professed for him, no obstacles to the match were
expected to be encountered at St. Petersburg. The untimely end of this
Prince, and the supplications of his wife and daughter, have since
altered his intent, and Madame Napoleon and her children are now, if I
may use the expression, incorporated and naturalized with the Bonaparte
family.

But what has lately occurred here will better serve to show that
Bonaparte is neither averse nor indifferent to the sex. You read last
summer in the public prints of the then Minister of the Interior
(Chaptal) being made a Senator; and that he was succeeded by our
Ambassador at Vienna Champagny. This promotion was the consequence of a
disgrace, occasioned by his jealousy of his mistress, a popular actress,
Mademoiselle George, one of the handsomest women of this capital. He was
informed by his spies that this lady frequently, in the dusk of the
evening, or when she thought him employed in his office, went to the
house of a famous milliner in the Rue St. Honor, where, through a door in
an adjoining passage, a person, who carefully avoided showing his face,
always entered immediately before or after her, and remained as long as
she continued there. The house was then by his orders beset with spies,
who were to inform him the next time she went to the milliner. To be
near at hand, he had hired an apartment in the neighbourhood, where the
very next day her visit to the milliner's was announced to him. While
his secretary, with four other persons, entered the milliner's house
through the street door, Chaptal, with four of his spies, forced the door
of the passage open, which was no sooner done than the disguised gallant
was found, and threatened in the most rude manner by the Minister and his
companions. He would have been still worse used had not the unexpected
appearance of Duroc and a whisper to Chaptal put a stop to the fury of
this enraged lover. The incognito is said to have been Bonaparte
himself, who, the same evening, deprived Chaptal of his ministerial
portfolio, and would have sent him to Cayenne, i