ns for
peace--Mr. Fox at the head of the British Cabinet--Intended
assassination of Napoleon--Propositions made through Lord Yarmouth
--Proposed protection of the Hanse towns--Their state--
Aggrandisement of the Imperial family--Neither peace nor war--
Sebastiani's mission to Constantinople--Lord Lauderdale at Paris,
and failure of the negotiations--Austria despoiled--Emigrant
pensions--Dumouriez's intrigues--Prince of Mecklenburg-Schwerin--
Loizeau.

I have been somewhat diffuse respecting the vast enterprises of M.
Ouvrard, and on the disastrous state of the finances during the campaign
of Vienna. Now, if I may so express myself, I shall return to the
Minister Plenipotentiary's cabinet, where several curious transactions
occurred. The facts will not always be given in a connected series,
because there was no more relation between the reports which I received
on a great variety of subjects than there is in the pleading of the
barristers who succeed each other in a court of justice.

On the 2d of January 1806 I learned that many houses in Hamburg had
received by post packets, each containing four copies of a declaration of
Louis XVIII. Dumouriez had his carriage filled with copies of this
declaration when he passed through Brunswick; and in that small town
alone more than 3000 were distributed. The size of this declaration
rendered its transmission by post very easy, even in France.

All my letters from the Minister recommended that I should keep a strict
watch over the motions of Dumouriez; but his name was now as seldom
mentioned as if he had ceased to exist. The part he acted seemed to be
limited to disseminating pamphlets more or less insignificant.

It is difficult to conceive the great courage and presence of mind
sometimes found in men so degraded as are the wretches who fill the
office of spies. I had an agent amongst the Swedo-Russians, named
Chefneux, whom I had always found extremely clever and correct. Having
for a long time received no intelligence from him I became very
anxious,--an anxiety which was not without foundation. He had, in fact,
been arrested at Lauenburg, and conducted, bound, tied hand and foot, by
some Cossacks to Luneburg. There was found on him a bulletin which he
was about to transmit to me, and he only escaped certain death by having
in his possession a letter of recommendation from a Hamburg merchant
well known to M. Alopaeus, the Russian Minister in that cit