English; and, as I lodged just opposite her balcony, we often talked across the street in my vernacular tongue.

Madame Bonaparte, the mother, is a fine person undoubtedly for her years; a sensible Italian physiognomy, fresh, alert, and vigorous. On the day of a féte champêtre in the enchanting valley called the Valda-Gol, the rendezvous of the ladies was on a steep and rugged mountain. She took my arm to descend the abrupt declivity, which she achieved with the lightness of a nymph: proving herself the true mother of her intrepid son. I asked her if it would not be delightful to pass away life in peace amongst these craggy mountains and flowery fields: and she answered, as if from her heart, with an accent that marked a soul, On n'y serait que trop heureux. If these little gossipings be of no importance in themselves, the persons of whom they are related, and their growing and extraordinary fortunes may give them some. If they afford you the slightest amusement I am repaid.

I might have had the honour of being, on my return to Paris, received in the circles of these ladies, and at the court; but, after the arrival of the English ambassador, a rule was made that no stranger should be presented but by the ministers of their respective countries; and I, a poor Irish exile, had no country nor no minister. That, however, does not prevent me from living in peace with myself and all the world.

LETTER XXVII.

Peace-Cornwallis-Colonel Littlehales-My MemorialAmiens-General Musnier-Unrelenting PersecutionMrs. Sampson-Her arrival in France with her Children.

Ar length, in an unexpected moment, the sound of cannon proclaimed the joyful news of peace. Festive illuminations gave it new éclat, and drooping humanity, half doubting, half believing, ventured to raise up her head. Next came the news of the almost frantic transports into which this event had thrown the government, no less than the people of England; and how all contending parties seemed now to be united. This might be supposed an auspicious moment for me; one of whose principal crimes was, with the infinite majority of the people of Great Britain and Ireland, to have opposed a war, the bare termination of which, although no one end for which it was ever pretended to exist had been attained, produced so much ecstasy. If such a peace had produced so much joy, as to resemble the effects of a reprieve upon the point of an execution,* one would suppose that persecution would at least cease against those who had never encouraged that war: one might have hoped that past experience had dictated a milder and a wiser system.

But more the minister of this good work was lord Cornwallis; the same nobleman whose honour was pledged to me so solemnly, that I was authorized by the chancellor, lord Clare, to say, "that the government that could prove false to such an agreement, could

* Mr. Lauriston, the aid-de-camp who carried the news to England, was drawn in triumph, by Englishmen, through the streets of London.

neither stand, nor deserve to stand." Relying upon lord Cornwallis's honour, however, more than on the assertions of lord Clare, I had given him a confidence blindly implicit, and to that honour, so flagrantly violated, I had now an opportunity to appeal. He was now in the plenitude of power, and he knew whether four years' separation from my family, and that detestable and atrocious law, that it should be felony to correspond with me, entered either into the letter or the spirit of my agreement with him, for so alone I shall consent to call it; or whether so base and virulent a persecution was a just return for the loyalty I had put into the observation of my part of this hard bargain, and the moderation I had shown, not to speak of the great sacrifice I had made to humanity and peace. I was warmly counselled also by my friends, and I had sincere ones in every class, (for I have sought only the good, and shunned only the vicious of any party,) to apply directly to lord Cornwallis for redress. Nobody doubted, that he who had power to make such an agreement would have power to make it respected. Or that he being intrusted with the destiny of so many nations, was equal to give a passport to an individual who certainly, under the circumstances, had a right to it. But in this my friends, French, Irish, and English, were alike deceived as the sequel will show.

A few days after the arrival of lord Cornwallis, I demanded of him, in writing, an audience of a few minutes, and after some days, I was at his desire received by his secretary, colonel Littlehales. This gentleman professed to be already in possession of my story, at which I was well pleased. But that we might the better understand each other, I begged to know if he was induced, from any thing he knew of me, to look upon me as a person who was guilty of any crime? He answered with a frankness that gave me still a better opinion of him, that I was accused of being concerned in that which had cost so much blood. I replied, that when I was in prison was the time to have examined

<--Measure Binding

at of those vicious his services, I had im upon any subject aried and voluntary a law which he had as gentle as he was inhabitants of the efuse to his memory for many days after when again on exIn one of his frocks e of the Orangeman additional token of notions of grief and sufferings had never

passed, and to say, that if any step was taken to molest me further, or to injure my securities, that I should then be obliged of necessity to vindicate myself by showers of proofs which might not be agreeable. Mr. Dobbs went accordingly to Mr. Cooke, who told him that if the representation I made was true, my bail had nothing to fear, and his advice to me was, to remain quietly where I was without taking any further steps.

It was in the latter end of July that Mr. Forster sailed for Guernsey, from whence he was to proceed to England. And I, finding the party-spirit increasing in the town of Bourdeaux, and considering it my first duty to avoid entering in any manner into the affairs of a country where I was enjoying, by a special exception in my favour, protection and hospitality; and being also desirous of an economical retreat, I retired to the banks of the Dordogne, in the neighbourhood of St. André Cusac, where I spent the remainder of the summer. And so well had I calculated what was about to happen, that the very day after my quitting Bourdeaux a movement took place which cost some lives, but which had no other result. It was during my residence in this retired spot, that I had the misfortune to lose my faithful servant, John Russell, who died of a fever, and was buried in the churchyard of St. Gervais, bearing upon his body to the grave the marks of the torture he had undergone.

The death of this faithful friend, for so I must now call him, was indeed a poignant affliction. With a heart big with anguish, and eyes wet with unfeigned tears, I examined his dead body and contemplated the scars which the lash of his atrocious executioners had inflicted. His gallant and generous spirit was fled to the mansions of eternal rest. He was gone to appear before that judge in whose sight servant and master, lord and peasant, stand in equal degree. If it be the will of that righteous and eternal Judge to confront the guilty with the innocent, what must be the