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

into that; then when I might be truly said to be in the hands of my enemies, in the midst of terror and carnage; when all laws, save those of destruction, were suspended; when I had no other possible protection than the courage of honour and innocence, I had boldly and unremittingly, to the last hour, demanded a trial, which had been shamefully refused. For had it been granted, I would have made it too clearly appear against my accusers, that they were traitors in every sense of the word; and that if I was, as they pretended, a rebel, I was a rebel only against the crimes of treason, disloyalty, subornation of perjury, murder, torture, kidnapping, arson, and house-breaking; crimes against which I was bound by my true allegiance to rebel. It was natural, I said, for those who had taken upon themselves to be my judges, accusers, and executioners, to propagate zealously such calumny, because as their crimes were my defence, so my innocence was their guilt. They might justify themselves in having by bloodshed, which I struggled to prevent, worked the union between England and Ireland. But it was too extravagant to call an Irishman a traitor, however he might be an enemy to such proceedings. And if this great measure is to be followed, as it was preceded, by proscriptions, treasons, and persecutions, it must remain a union certainly in name alone. Lord Cornwallis's principal glory, I added, in Ireland, had been putting a stop to horrors at which the human heart recoils, and which I have been disgracefully persecuted for opposing. I did not deny, that under such circumstances, educated as I was in notions of constitution, liberty, and true religion, I might have been bold, or call it mad, enough to have taken the field. But this I never had done; and that all the charges against me, such as being a French general, a traitor, and so forth, were alike contemptible, and undeserving of an answer. I told colonel Littlehales, moreover, that the best compliment I could offer to lord Cornwallis was to assure him of my firm belief, that in my

situation he would have done the same thing; and that upon no pretext whatever he would suffer my countrymen to go over to his country and torture his countrymen, or dishonour his countrywomen. If I did not think so, and that he would repel them at the peril of his existence, I should not think of him as I did, and no man should ever have seen me at his door. I also answered colonel Littlehales, that of all the charges preferred against me, not one happened to be true. But if it was any satisfaction to him at any time, I was ready to say to what degree, and in what manner, I should have consented to repel force by force.

Such were the topics I used; but which I certainly urged with all the deference due to his situation, and to the person of the marquis Cornwallis, whom I always wished to respect. However, he interrupted me by advising me in the name of lord Cornwallis, as a friend, to present him a memorial, which he (lord Cornwallis) would undertake to forward to the lord lieutenant of Ireland; but that I should leave out every thing but what went to prove that I came involuntarily into France, and that I had not since I had been there joined in any hostility against the government of England. And colonel Littlehales added, that he himself would be in Ireland as soon as the memorial could be there. And he even advised me to apprize my wife of this, and to prevent her coming precipitately over, as I told him I had invited her to do after my fruitless application to lord Pelham. He said that he could not take upon himself to promise; yet in his opinion it was likely to be, since my desire was to return home, a useless trouble and expense. He told me that in a few days the post-office would be open, and that I might write freely in that way: but as I feared the interception of my letters, that channel having long ceased to be inviolate, he charged himself with the care of forwarding a letter to my wife, to the effect above-mentioned. In this letter I advised her to wait a little longer, until an answer to this application should be