CHAPTER XXVI.

VENICE.

THE BUONAPARTE FAMILY IN THE VENETIAN

TERRITORIES.

Removal of the Works of Art to Paris......Josephine leaves Venice for the Terra Firma......Her visit to the Bishop of Treviso......Buonaparte and Mrs. Billington at Bologna ....... Cecilia Tron and Zorzi Richi......Buonaparte's "independent" Cisalpin Republic described......Fatal effects of domestic division exemplified in the case of the Royal Family of Spain......Brief Sketch of the Spanish Court and Nation.

THE populace of Venice supported the loss of all the beautiful works of art with a most philosophical indifference, until they saw the preparations which were making, at the door of St. Mark's Church, to take down the four famous horses, brought from Constantinople by the Venetians, when they conquered that city, and of which I have elsewhere spoken. The sight of what was going on occasioned a deep national sensation; and, if there had been at that precise moment, any manly spirit ready

to head the populace, a revolt would inevitably have taken place. But their once leading men had been deprived of their property; and with that property had fled their former manly spirit of resistance. So true is it, that "L'uomo senza pecunia è l'immagine della morte." The people, therefore, made a merit of necessity, and suffered the French to proceed unmolested in the work of taking down these invaluable ornaments of their once famous city. No Venetian labourer could, however, be found to assist them in the work of national robbery; and the whole populace attended the embarkation of the four steeds, as they would have attended the body of a revered friend to the grave.

Had St. Mark's Place and the great tower been moveable, the French would have carried them off, amidst the cries of "Viva la libertà et l'egualianza; chi non ruba non impiegnisce la panza." In the Terra Firma, they plundered the several Monte di Pietà; which were establishments similar to our pawnbrokers' shops; and thereby was occasioned the ruin of thousands of honest and respectable families.

From Venice Madame Josephine and her precious train of democratical trollops passed

to the Terra Firma, where they made it a constant practice, as they had before done at Venice, to take every thing they had an inclination to, without paying for it. They never waited for an invitation, but visited wherever they pleased. Amongst the rest, Merini, the Bishop of Treviso, was obliged to entertain them at dinner; in the course of which the old man caught a horrid fit of the gout in his hand, from a cold occasioned by the loss of a large, beautiful, and valuable ring, which Josephine had thought proper to take from his fingers; but which, unfortunately, she forgot to return, The poor bishop had but slender hopes of being made a cardinal; for at that time the title was out of fashion, and he died before the religious farce was brought upon the political boards. Upon the above occasion, the Venetians were accustomed to observe, "I Francesi fanni molto uso del verbo avere, ma quello del verbo dare non hanno nel loro vocabulario."

When Buonaparte and the French army entered Bologna, Mrs. Billington happened to be singing at the opera; and, so terrified was she, that she refused to perform. Upon hearing this, the Hero of Italy ordered her to come to him in his box, and he there assured

her, she had nothing to fear from him, as he "never was at war with the fair sex." He nevertheless thought proper to arrest Mrs. Watson, the English Consul's wife, and had her dragged about, from place to place, for eight years, as a prisoner of war. He treated Mrs. Spencer Smith in the same manner, as well as another English lady at Venice. The former was arrested, by Buonaparte's order, immediately on the French coming to Venice; the other two, while he was in Russia. One of them had resided in Venice twenty years, and was married to a Venetian. In short, the whole life of this man was a continued series of contradictions; but the greatest of all was, perhaps, the surrendering himself up to the English, whom he absolutely detested, and whom he had always described as a nation of pirates" Cette nation doit être écrasée," was an expression he was accustomed to make use of, whenever the great man happened to be thwarted by the British government, in any of his “ grandes pensées."

I have mentioned Madame Cecilia Tron, as being the only Venetian noble lady, who paid Josephine any particular attention. Her reason for so doing was briefly this: she had at the time a lover of the name of Zorzi Richi, a

Greek and a native of Corfu, whom she afterwards married. For this animal, who was the ne plus ultra of a Jacobin, Cecilia was extremely anxious to procure some appointment under the new government, and on this account was she induced to pay court to this female fox under the garb of a lamb. Nor was Cecilia unsuc cessful in her application to the Cisalpin regeneratrice, for Zorzi, sure enough, became one of the nouveaux employés; and, rather than have his name left out of the list, the brute would submit to have been made a night-man; for "charity begins at home," was Zorzi's favourite motto; and he had moreover a prodigious attachment to the Agrarian law with regard to property, in the expectation of securing a few acres for himself.

But, in the midst of the democratical exhibitions which Cecilia Tron gave at her palace on the Grand Canal, she could not, I think, help sometimes comparing her then situation, with the honours which she had once received from the hands of the Emperor, Joseph the Second, and contrasting the manners and habits of her then raggamuffin guests, with those of the distinguished individuals who formerly attended her delightful parties, at the times when that