The other Sunday afternoon I accompanied him to one of his villas, in the direct road from Munich—­near which indeed I had passed in my route hither.  Or, rather, speaking more correctly the Baron accompanied me:—­as he bargained for my putting a pair of post-horses to my carriage.  He wished me to see his books, and his rural domain.  The carriage and burden were equally light, and the road was level and hard.  We therefore reached the place of our destination in a short hour.  It was a very pleasant mansion, with a good garden, and several fertile fields of pasture and arable land.  The Baron made it his summer residence.  His books filled the largest room in the house.  He invited me to look around, to select any volumes that I might fancy, provided they were not grammatical or lexicographical—­for, in that department, he never wished his strength to be diminished, or his numbers to be lessened.  I did as he desired me:  culled a pretty book-posey;—­not quite so blooming as that selected at Lincoln,[71] some dozen years ago,—­and, as the sun was setting, voted the remainder of the evening, till supper-time, to a walk with the Baron upon the neighbouring heights.

The evening was fair and mild, and the Baron was communicative and instructive.  His utterance is rapid and vehement; but with a tone of voice and mode of action by no means uninteresting.  We talked about the possession of Munich by the French forces, under the command of Moreau, and he narrated some particulars equally new and striking.  Of Moreau, he spoke very handsomely; declaring him to have been a modest, grave, and sensible man—­putting his great military talents entirely out of the question.  The Baron himself, like every respectable inhabitant of Munich, was put under military surveillance.  Two grenadiers and a petty officer were quartered upon him.  He told me a curious anecdote about Bonaparte and Marshal Lasnes—­if I remember rightly, upon the authority of Moreau.  It was during the crisis of some great battle in Austria, when the fate of the day was very doubtful, that Bonaparte ordered Lasnes to make a decisive movement with his cavalry; Lasnes seemed to hesitate.  Bonaparte reiterated the order, and Lasnes appeared to hesitate again—­as if doubting the propriety of the movement.  Bonaparte eyed him with a look of ineffable contempt; and added—­almost fixing his teeth together, in a hissing but biting tone of sarcasm—­“Est-ce que je t’ai fait trop riche?” Lasnes dashed his spurs into the sides of his charger, turned away, and prepared to put the command of his master into execution.