abundance and of liberty, in
seeing the person or meditating on the character of the host, you feel
both your inferiority of fortune and the humiliation of dependence, and
that you visit a master instead of a friend, who indirectly tells you,
"Eat, drink, and rejoice as long and as much as you like; but remember
that if you are happy, it is to my generosity you are indebted, and if
unhappy, that I do not care a pin about you." With Lucien it is the very
reverse. His conduct seems to indicate that by your company you confer
an obligation on him, and he is studious to remove, on all occasions,
that distance which fortune has placed between him and his guests; and as
he cannot compliment them upon being wealthier than himself, he seizes
with delicacy every opportunity to chew that he acknowledges their
superiority in talents and in genius as more than an equivalent for the
absence of riches.

He is, nevertheless, himself a young man of uncommon parts, and, as far
as I could judge from my short intercourse with the reserved Joseph and
with the haughty Napoleon, he is abler and better informed than either,
and much more open and sincere. His manners are also more elegant, and
his language more polished, which is the more creditable to him when it
is remembered how much his education has been neglected, how vitiated the
Revolution made him, and that but lately his principal associates were,
like himself, from among the vilest and most vulgar of the rabble. It is
not necessary to be a keen observer to remark in Napoleon the upstart
soldier, and in Joseph the former low member of the law; but I defy the
most refined courtier to see in Lucien anything indicating a ci-devant
sans-culotte. He has, besides, other qualities (and those more
estimable) which will place him much above his elder brothers in the
opinion of posterity. He is extremely compassionate and liberal to the
truly distressed, serviceable to those whom he knows are not his friends,
and forgiving and obliging even to those who have proved and avowed
themselves his enemies. These are virtues commonly very scarce, and
hitherto never displayed by any other member of the Bonaparte family.

An acquaintance of yours, and--a friend of mine, Count de T-----, at his
return here from emigration, found, of his whole former fortune,
producing once eighty thousand livres--in the year, only four farms
unsold, and these were advertised for sale. A man who had once been his