at six the same evening.  Pontarlier is a dreary, melancholy looking place, consisting of a very long street and several offsets of streets, situated in the midst of mountains, eternally covered with snow.  Winter reigns here during nine months of the year.  At Pontarlier the whole garrison were under arms, when I arrived, to pay the last duties to a most respectable and respected officer, whose death was occasioned by falling into the river, while at the necessary, by the under board giving way.  This officer had served in almost all the campaigns of Napoleon and had greatly distinguished himself.  What a cruel death for a warrior who had been in fifty battles!  That death should have shunned him in the field of battle, to make him fall in a manner at once inglorious and ridiculous! yet such is destiny.  Pyrrhus fell by a tile flung from a house by an old woman, and I am acquainted with a gallant captain in the British Navy who lost his leg by amputation, having broken it (oh horror!) by a fall from the top of a stage coach.

I left Pontarlier on the 2d July, and arrived at Lausanne the same evening at five o’clock.  On my return to Lausanne I had the pleasure to form an acquaintance with several eminent Frenchmen proscribed and banished from France, on account of having voted the death of Louis XVI, as members of the National Convention, which tried him, and for having voted, after the return of Napoleon from Elba, the Acte additionnel, which excluded the Bourbons for ever from the throne of France, Among them are, 1st, Monsieur Lamarque, who was one of the commissioners sent by the Convention to arrest Dumouriez, but being seized by him, and delivered over to the Austrians, he passed some time in captivity and was at length released, by being exchanged with some others against the Duchess d’Angouleme.[67] He is a very able man and seems to have far more political talent than any of the other Conventionnels who are here.  On Napoleon’s return from Elba he voted for him, but made strong objections against the formation of a peerage, which he said was perfectly useless in France, and pregnant with mischief to boot, as it would only serve as an appui to despotism.  He wrote a pamphlet with some excellent remarks on this, subject.  He therein points out the evils of an hereditary Chamber, and of a priviledged aristocracy, who have nothing to expect from the people, but all from the Prince; and in its stead he proposes an additional elective Chamber, something on the plan of the Senate in America, but he decidedly reprobates an hereditary peerage.

The next is General Espinassy, a very good classical scholar and a most upright and amiable man.[68] In his vote he was solely influenced by strong but conscienscious republican principles; he resides here with his wife and two sons; he was considered as one of the best engineer officers in France and he opposed the nomination of Napoleon to the Imperial dignity in 1804.