“My poor aunt, who took care of me in my infancy, is dead. I am extremely uneasy about the fate of poor old Jacqueline, her femme-de-chambre, who was a second mother to me, and is now left alone, and perhaps poor. I wish at whatever cost to receive her here. The family are opposed. My husband fears, and with reason, to contradict his brothers and sisters, on whom we rely a good deal for our children. He proposes to pay secretly Jacqueline’s board in a house at Lyons, where she will no longer lack food and care, but I would like to fulfil my obligations of gratitude toward this poor woman to their utmost extent. If I were in her place, and she in mine, nothing would prevent her from receiving me, even in her bed.” The domestics of the old families in France seemed to have been regarded as a part of the family. Service was almost hereditary, and a bond on both sides. In the French Revolution, nine out of ten of those proscribed by law who escaped were saved by the devotedness of their domestics. Madame de Lamartine shows how fully she regarded the tie that bound her to every member of her household as a sort of spiritual relationship. “Palm-Sunday, 1805.--There is a great commotion in town and country. The emperor arrives to-day with all his court. We are _très gênés_, because we are to lodge Mgr. de Pradt, Bishop of Poitiers (the emperor’s chaplain; since Archbishop of Malines, so celebrated for playing the courtier at that time, and _for his subsequent ingratitude towards Napoleon after his fall_). I prefer this guest to any other of the retinue.” Of course the parenthetical clause is by M. de Lamartine. It seems Mgr. de Pradt was not wholly ungrateful to the emperor, for the declaration issued by the allied sovereigns at the Congress of Laybach in 1821, so insulting to the memory of Napoleon, called forth from the Archbishop of Malines the following noble protestation: “It is too late to insult Napoleon now: he is defenceless, after having so many years crouched at his feet while he had the power to punish. Those who are armed should respect a disarmed enemy. The glory of a conqueror depends, in a great measure, on the just consideration shown toward the captive, particularly when he yields to superior force, not to superior genius. It is too late to call Napoleon a revolutionist after having, for such a length of time, pronounced him to be the restorer of order in France, and consequently in Europe. It is odious to see the shaft of insult aimed at him by those who once stretched forth their hands to him as a friend, pledged their faith to him as an ally, sought to prop a tottering throne by mingling their blood with his.