



Produced by David Widger





MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF ST. CLOUD


Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London


By Lewis Goldsmith



Volume 6



LETTER X.

PARIS, September, 1805.

My LORD:--I was lately invited to a tea-party by one of our rich
upstarts, who, from a scavenger, is, by the Revolution and by Bonaparte,
transformed into a Legislator, Commander of the Legion of Honour, and
possessor of wealth amounting to eighteen millions of livres.  In this
house I saw for the first time the famous Madame Chevalier, the mistress,
and the indirect cause of the untimely end, of the unfortunate Paul the
First.  She is very short, fat, and coarse.  I do not know whether
prejudice, from what I have heard of her vile, greedy, and immoral
character, influenced my feelings, but she appeared to me a most artful,
vain, and disagreeable woman.  She looked to be about thirty-six years of
age; and though she might when younger have been well made, it is
impossible that she could ever have been handsome.  The features of her
face are far from being regular.  Her mouth is large, her eyes hollow,
and her nose short.  Her language is that of brothels, and her manners
correspond with her expressions.  She is the daughter of a workman at a
silk manufactory at Lyons; she ceased to be a maid before she had
attained the age of a woman, and lived in a brothel in her native city,
kept by a Madame Thibault, where her husband first became acquainted with
her.  She then had a tolerably good voice, was young and insinuating, and
he introduced her on the same stage where he was one of the inferior
dancers.  Here in a short time she improved so much, that she was engaged
as a supernumerary; her salary in France as an actress was,