HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN OF NAPLES.

[Concluded from Vol. II. Page 229.]

object of Bonaparte not to suffer so rich an inher:tance to escape again from his hands. He resolved accordingly to annex it to France, by creating it into a tributary kingdom, and bestowing the crown upon his brother Joseph.

To this melancholy history we have little more to add; the Queen of Naples is now at Palermo, or Messina, a fugitive from her country, and pent up in an island, secure only by the protection of

a British fleet. The island of Sicily is daily threatened with invasion by France, and it is a matter of serious moment to conjecture how long we shall be able to defend it. The Queen of Naples is a woman of heroic fortitude, and is not likely to lose any thing of her royal dignity by adverse fortune; she still preserves an elevation of spirit, and is not dejected by those calamities which might overwhelm an ordinary mind.

MADAME TALLIEN.

list of the military commission; or, which was the same, she knew herself to be one of those unfortunate persons intended to be tried and executed within twenty-four hours. When she was me

Ar the age of eighteen the rich and beautiful daughter of the Spanish Count de Gabarrus, was married to M. de Fontenai, a counsellor of the Parliament of Bourdeaux, who three years afterwards, to save his life at the expence of his pro-ditating on her fate, Tallien suddenly entered; he perty emigrated and joined his loyal countrymen on the banks of the Rhine. Not wishing to expose a woman he pretended dearly to love either to the hazards and dangers of war, or the perils, contempt, and sufferings of exile, Mr. de Fontenai, when emigrating himself, left his wife at Paris, to wait there the issue of the pending contest both between states and factions.

After the unfortunate Queen Marie Antoinette had been murdered in such a barbarous manner by the regicide assassins of her royal consort, Madame de Fontenai easily perceived that her sex no more than her country would be a safeguard for her; and therefore, by some pecuniary sacrifices, procured a passport for Bourdeaux, with permission to sail thence in a neutral vessel for Spain.

threw himself at her feet, and began with professing his sincere affection for her, and avowed himself her slave though she was no longer his prisoner. "Here is the list," continued he, "of the prisoners once condemned to perish with you; your name is already omitted, erase those of other persons whom you wish to save, and they shall all be set at liberty to-morrow morning." "I shall convince myself," said Madame de Fontenai, "whether you are sincere or not; lend me but pen and ink." With one single stroke she at once crossed all the names on the fatal list. Within twelve hours afterwards all these individuals of both sexes came to thank her for their deliverance, being informed by Tallien that they owed it to her interference alone.

Of the preference she then gave to M. de Fontenai, this ill-bred and vicious man seemed but little to know the value. Some few days after his till then faithful and amiable wife had been delivered of her first child, he had the indelicacy and brutality to introduce under the same roof in his house a common prostitute. The indiscreet fidelity of a maid informed Madame de Fontenai of the infidelity of her husband. With feelings acute as well as indignant, not considering the weak state of her health, she rose from her bed, and flew towards the room polluted by impurity. She found the door bolted, and was refused admittance. Smarting however more from the insult offered than regarding the strength she possessed, in endeavouring to force an entrance she fainted away, and was carried almost lifeless back to her bed. A woman, the vic im of the seduc

On her arrival at Bourdeaux, Tallien resided there as a representative of the people and as a national commissioner; she presented herself before the Revolutionary Committee to have her pass verified previous to her embarkation, but being the daughter and wife of noblemen, instead of obtaining leave to quit France, she was arrested as a suspected person, and as such confined in a loathsome goal. Tallien was struck with her superior beauty, and immediately was enamoured of her. Forming his opinion of her however from many other gay, indiscreet, though arrested ladies, he addressed her thus:-"My pretty female citizen, I shall call on you here as soon as it is dark-you understand me-I want to see you alone." "But I will not see you alone," answered she; "throw your Sultan handkerchief to some person more complaisant, and more worthy of such insulting and humiliating distinction, corruption, or negligence of one sex, is also tion." "You shall shortly repent of your haughtiness," said Tallien, ferociously quitting her. The very next day her name was upon the

frequently the persecuted object of the jealousy, envy, pride, or unchari ableness of the other. Had M. de Fontenai been prudent and pure,

his wife might still have been innocent and chaste.

When at Paris, Tallien of course often visited Madame de Fontenai, who easily obtained a divorce from a husband proscribed as an emigrant. She refused however to regard Tallien in any other light than that of a friend, as long as France groaned under the tyranny of Robespierre, more barefaced, more violent, but less artful and less oppressive than that of Bonaparte.

Jean Lambert Tallien was born at Paris in 1770, and though only the son of a porte: had, from the kindness of his father's master, been educated above his birth. He was at the begin ning of the revolution successively the steward of Marquis de Bercy, clerk to an attorney, and in the office of the treasury; secretary to Brostaret, a member of the constituent assembly, and assistant to the proprietors of the Moniteur. In 1791 he published his own journal, called Ami des Citoyens, which did not meet with suc

cess.

form of apparel and appearance, Madame Tallien went to the other extreme in inventing the haut ton of nudity. The ungallant savageness of Robespierre, and the ungenteel brutality of his accomplices, had already necessitated every lady awaiting death from the revolutionary tribunal, or only confined in consequence of the revolutionary tyranny, to cut off her hair and to cut down her gown, if she wished to avoid the insults of a public executioner, or the horrors of his unfeeling operation when on the scaffold.

It must also be confessed that a nation vicious to the highest degree before the revolution, had not improved its morals since; and that the fair sex in France naturally coquettes, vain, dashing, and bold, were much more inclined towards the naked than towards the covered or clothed system. Nakedness, absolute nakedness, and nothing but nakedness, was therefore seen at the play-houses, at the opera, at the concerts, routs, and in public walks as well as in private assemblies. When one lady left off a fichue, another laid aside a petticoat. When one uncovered her arms, another exposed her legs or thighs. Had the progress of stripping continued a little longer in the same proportion, it is very probable that

most French ladies would in some months have reduced themselves to be admired, envied, or blamed, as the Eves of the eighteenth century.

But Madame Tallien did not enjoy undisturbed the dictatorship of the fashions; envious, seditious, or facetious rivals often opposed her. Among these Madame de Beauharnois, the gay widow of the guillotined viscount of the same name, was most ingenious and most active, though at first not the most apprehended. Having better

He shewed himself one of the most ungenerous and indefatigable enemies of his virtuous King, whose trial he pressed, and for whose death he voted. During his several missions as a representative of the people, he committed the greatest excesses and cruelties. It was not till after his acquaintance with Midame de Fontenai that he became more moderate; as to please her he had spared Bourdeaux, and to obtain her hand he saved the lives of thousands at Paris by the decided part he took in the destruction of Robespierre; and though his motives were dictated by personal interest alone, he notwithstanding rendered great services to his wretched country. His conduct and actions were afterwards inconsistent and contradictory, by turns the pane-shaped thighs than well formed arms, the pride gyrist or the accuser of revolutionary criminals; he was therefore suspected by all factions, and defended by no party. Such was the regicide to whom Madame de Fontenai united herself on the 20th of August 1794, three weeks after the death of Robespierre. He was then one of the most popular revolutionists, and she soon became one of the most fashionable belles of the French

of Madame Tallien, she, under a clear muslin gown, put on flesh coloured satin pantaloons, leaving off all petticoats, but at the same time lowering the sleeves of her gowns to her elbows, whose long elastic gloves of grenoble combined to conceal even her clumsy fingers. Madame Tallien, in her turn, wore gowns without sleeves; and to distract the notice of amateurs from the flesh-coloured pantaloons, affixed borders of large Brussels lace, not only to her white silk petticoat but to her cambric chemises. These fashionable contrarities entertained many and scandalised few of the republican beaus and belles, though the

republic. It was however almost as difficult a task for her to exchange decency for Vandalism, to produce order in place of confusion in the re gions of fashion, as for French political revolu tionists to fix and constitute a regular government on the republican basis of anarchy and licentious-partisans of short sleeves lampooned those of ness. At once to attempt the restoration of former usages and customs, from which five years of revolutions had made a distance of five centuries, would have been a vain attempt

The court,

gala, or full dress, could not immediately supplant the sans-culotte and carmagnole vestments of filth and rags. Instead therefore of commencing with a progressive advancement towards a re

long gloves, and the cabal of under-petticoats wrote epigrams on the motives of the wearers of pantaloons. Every thing remained unsettled, and a civil war was by many judged inevitable, when a certain situation of the Viscountess Dowager de Beauharnois made her resort to false bellies, which were immediately accompanied by Madame Tallien's artificial queues. Both ex

tremes therefore met, and caused a cessation of hostilities and the conclusion of a treaty of neutrality; and the year 1795 passed over without further disturbances or innovations.

contest.

When during 1796 fortune had crowned her new sans-culotte husband Bonaparte with undeserved success in Italy, the ex-viscountess was tempted to encroach on, and even to infringe, preceding engagements. Until the peace of Campo Formio, when the Parisians saluted Madame Bonaparte as Notre Dame de Victoires, || and abus d Madame Tallien as Notre Dame de Septembre, the former had not many or great advantages; but then the latter, under pretence of ill health, prudently withdrew from the scene of As soon however as the glorious victory of Lord Nelson at Aboukir was known at Paris, Madame Tallien shewed herself perfectly recovered, entered the lists with fresh vigour, and obliged her proud rival not only to shift her quarters but to change her colours. That year, 1798, a third and dangerous pretender started up in the elegant person of the celebrated Madame Recamier, whose appearance was sufficient to transform rivals into a'lies. She, however, more from prudence and modesty than from fear of the formidable veteran forces of her opposers, soon made an honourable retreat, and tranquillity has rewarded her sacrifice of vanity.

In November 1799, after Bonaparte had usurp

her citizens." The author should have added that this eminent citizen then resided in a simple cottage, of which the furniture alone cost four thousand louis d'ors. As to French republican manners, are they ot nearly connected with drowning, shooting, massacreing, murdering, proscribing, and plundering? Society has suffered but little from Madame Tailien's vanity, while humanity will for ever deplore and coudemn the barbarous excesses of the most eminent citizen, Tallien, her republican husband.

It is averred by all the classes in France, that' the young, handsome, and accomplished Madame de Fontenai, who so long continued the fashionable idol of men, and the fashionable model of women, divorced and married Tallion only to save her own head, and the lives of hundreds of other innocent persons. She never had any affection, not even inclination, for an individual it was impossible for her to esteem, and she therefore treated him rather as a valet han as a hus band; he was used still worse by her father, Count de Gabarrus.

In the sense of strict justice and sound morality, no provocations whatever can extenuate the violation of matrimonial duty. A wife how. ever, circumstanced like Madame Tallien, who had no choice but between the embraces of an unworthy and a worthless husband, or a cruel and degrading dea'h from the hands of the exe.

though she must certainly be to blame, is less culpable than the unprovoked adulteress, whose vicious propensities injure and confer wretched. ness on a partner, the free selection of her heart, deserving her love and her fidelity as well as her

ed the supreme authority in France, Madamecutioner, if disgust or revenge led her astray, Tallien, from a certain coolness attended with certain airs of nauteur, concluded that the wife of an upstart, who endured neither an equal nor a superior, would not long respect treaties which put her on a level with a person whom she considered not only as an inferior but as a subject.regard and tenderness. She the efore made overtures to Madame Recamier for forming a common league against a common foe. While their plenipotentiaries were discussing, the battle of Marengo occurred, and broke off all further conferences; and had not another intruder, Madame Murat, presented her self, Madame Bonaparte would have been as much the undisputed sovereign of toilets as her husband is of cabinets.

A republican writer thus complains of Madame Tallien's fashionable incivisme : “Possessed of an ample income, the whole of which is at her own comman 1, she indulges in all the extravagance of dress and decoration. One day her shoulders, ches', and legs, are bare; on the next they are adorned with festoons of gold chains, while her head sparkles with diamonds; and instead of the simplicity of a Roman matron, she constantly exhibits all the ostentatious luxury of a Persian sultana. France may be termed a commonwealth, but these surely are not republican manners befitting the wife of one of the most eminent of

That Madame Tallien has been very gallant, and very indiscreet in her gallantries, cannot be denied; but that also numbers of persons have boasted of her favours, and published anecdotes of their successful intrigues with her, to whom she had scarcely ever spoken, is equally true; and will be believed by every one who has studied the character of the vain and presumptuous French petit maitres, who are greater gasconaders under the colours of Venus than even under the banners of Mars.

Madame Tailien, when Madame de Fontenai was esteemed not only one of the most beautiful and amiable persons of her sex, but also as one truly respectable and virtuous; she resided at Paris eighteen months af er her first husband's emigration, and was constantly surrounded by admirers and adorers; but she afforded no more occasion for the rumours and clamours of malice and malignity, than for the calumny and accusations of envy and scandal. She quitted the capital in October 1793 as pure as she returned to

handsome, well-made young man of family, fortune and education, became very fashionable in the fashionable societies of the French capital. He was introduced there as a Danish traveller by the name of Fredericson; but was shortly and usually known by the appellation of the beau Regicide. His real and family name and title was Count de Ribbing, a Swedish nobleman by birth, but implicated in the murder of Gustavus III. the late King of Sweden.

it in March 1794. She never admitted even Tallien, to whom she thought herself both obliged and engaged, but in the presence of a third person; and she never went out to plays, walks, or parties, but in the company of some female friend, or followed by attendants who never lost sight of their mistress. She frequently protested long before her second marriage, that gratitude and humanity alone had occasioned her divorce, and that she believed she should fall a victim to her feelings for the sufferings of others. Shortly after Tallien's departure, the beau ReShe repeatedly complained to her friends and gicide was lodged with his wife, and continued relatives how disagreeable Tallien was to her, and with her until 1801, when Bonaparte, having how much resignation it demanded on her part heard of a penchant of Josephine for him, dis to unite her destiny with that of such a vile person. patched to him an order to quit France immeAfter her marriage, notwithstanding her in- diately," as the First Consul could not suffer in vincible repugnance to Tallien, she remained his dominions an assassin of the father of his faithful and irreproachable; but this vain up-ally, the King of Sweden." start shewed himself as immoral and indelicate as cruel and unprincipled. He abandoned a wife then the pride of perfection and matrimonial loveliness, boasted of the impure society of courtesans and strumpets, and afterwards vaunted before her of his depravity as of glorious achieve ments. She still, however, resisted the incitements of revenge, the gratification of her passions, the temptations of pleasure, and the allurements of love, and the pleasing prospect, or rather certainty, of being beloved by a gentle-threats, he at length consented, and in 1802 the man her equal by birth and of principles congenial with her own. At last she happened to be acquainted with the loyal and witty, though not handsome Count de who hated her husband as much as she despised him. To his first question, Can a lady of your rank, of your accomplishments, love a moral and political monster such as Tallien? she answered only with a significant blush. He took advantage of her bashfulness, embarrassment, nay humiliation, and he ceased that day to be a virtuous woman, a faithful wife.

When once the nice but strong limits which separate virtue from vice are transgressed, the road to ruin is st. ooth, enticing, easy, and nearly irresistible. In the course of a few weeks she entertained as great a contempt of herself as dislike of her husband; but familiarity with debauchery soon engendered indifference towards morality or even decency. Every gentleman whose manners she liked, whose conversation was agreeable to her, whose figure pleased her, or whom her fancy adorned with real or imaginary excellencies, was certainly without much difficulty or long perseverance to be counted among her favo red gallants. Her favours and distinctions finally became so common that they ceased to be eith renviable or desirable.

Thus was she situated when in June 1798 Tallien sailed for Egypt. At that period a tall,

Madame Tallien had promised her father to obtain a divorce from her present husband as soon as he returned from Egypt. A petition for a divorce was therefore ready drawn up and presented to Tallien at her first interview in 1801, accompanied with two living arguments, her two sons, of whom she had been delivered during his absence, and of whom she acknowledged that the beau Regicide and Co. were the fathers. After many complaints, reproaches, oaths, and

daughter of Count Gabarrus was still unmarried with two husbands alive.

Madame Tallien is an incredible composition of virtues and vices; of good qualities and shameful irregularities. From habit more than from inclination she is, like Madame Bonaparte, one of the most profligate female characters of revolutionary France. Above remorse as well as repentance, she seems to care as little about what others say of her as about her own conduct. She is now (1807) in her thirty-sixth year, but does not appear to be twenty-five; she certainly still is one of the finest, best formed, and handsomest wor women of the French capital, though she no longer has any great influence in the fashionable world.

Madame Tallien in 1805, married M. de Caraman, much against the wishes of the family of the latter. She has now three husbands alive, besides two children, of whom neither of them is the father. Hitherto her behaviour, since her marriage with M. de Caraman, is as irreproachable and prudent as during her first marriage with M. de Fontenai, who often visits his ci-devant wife. She has publicly declared her intention to regain her lost reputation, which she says would always have been preserved had not her first husband been a fool and her second a rogue. She is now united to a gentleman of sense and honour, to whom she seeins sincerely and affec tionately attached.