When Valere heard from his mistress this occurrence, he advised her to make the most money she could of the Spaniard’s curious scruples.  A letter was, therefore, written to him, demanding one hundred thousand livres—­as the price of secrecy and withholding the particulars of this business from the knowledge of the tribunals and the police; and an answer was required within twenty-four hours.  The same night Gravina offered one thousand Louis, which were accepted, and the papers returned; but the next day Valere went to his hotel, Rue de Provence, where he presented himself as a brother of Barrois.  He stated that he still possessed authenticated copies of the papers returned, and that he must have either the full sum first asked by his sister, or an annuity of twelve thousand livres settled upon her.  Instead of an answer, Gravina ordered him to be turned out of the house.  An attorney then waited on His Excellency, on the part of the brother and the sister, and repeated their threats and their demands, adding that he would write a memorial both to the Emperor of the French and to the King of Spain, were justice refused to his principals any longer.

Gravina was well aware that this affair, though more laughable than criminal, would hurt both his character and credit if it were known in France; he therefore consented to pay seventy-six thousand livres more, upon a formal renunciation by the party of all future claims.  Not having money sufficient by him, he went to borrow it from a banker, whose clerk was one of Talleyrand’s secret agents.  Our Minister, therefore, ordered every step of Gravina to be watched; but he soon discovered that, instead of wanting this money for a political intrigue, it was necessary to extricate him out of an amorous scrape.  Hearing, however, in what a scandalous manner the Ambassador had been duped and imposed upon, he reported it to Bonaparte, who gave Fouche orders to have Valere, Barrois, and the attorney immediately transported to Cayenne, and to restore Gravina his money.  The former part of this order the Minister of Police executed the more willingly, as it was according to his plan that Barrois had pitched upon Gravina for a lover.  She had been intended by him as a spy on His Excellency, but had deceived him by her reports—­a crime for which transportation was a usual punishment.

Notwithstanding the care of our Government to conceal and bury this affair in oblivion, it furnished matter both for conversation in our fashionable circles, and subjects for our caricaturists.  But these artists were soon seized by the police, who found it more easy to chastise genius than to silence tongues.  The declaration of war by Spain against your country was a lucky opportunity for Gravina to quit with honour a Court where he was an object of ridicule, to assume the command of a fleet which might one day make him an object of terror.  When he took leave of Bonaparte, he was told to return to France victorious, or never to return any more; and Talleyrand warned him as a friend, “whenever he returned to his post in France to leave his marriage mania behind him in Spain.  Here,” said he, “you may, without ridicule, intrigue with a hundred women, but you run a great risk by marrying even one.”