Such is the public spirit, and such have been the sufferings of the people in the ci-devant Lombardy; in Piedmont they are still worse off.  Having more national character and more fidelity towards their Sovereign than their neighbours, they are also more cruelly treated.  Their governor, General De Menou, has caused most of the departments to be declared under martial law, and without right to claim the protection of our happy constitution.  In every city or town are organized special tribunals, the progeny of our revolutionary tribunals, against the sentences of which no appeal can be made, though these sentences are always capital ones.  Before these, suspicion is evidence, and an imprudent word is subject to the same punishment as a murderous deed.  Murmur is regarded as mutiny, and he who complains is shot as a conspirator.

There exist only two ways for the wretched Piedmontese to escape these legal assassinations.  They must either desert their country or sacrifice a part of their property.  In the former case, if retaken, they are condemned as emigrants; and in the latter they incur the risk that those to whom they have already given a part of their possessions will also require the remainder, and having obtained it, to enjoy in security the spoil, will send them to the tribunals and to death.  De Menou has a fixed tariff for his protection, regulated according to the riches of each person; and the tax-gatherers collect these arbitrary contributions with the regular ones, so little pains are taken to conceal or to disguise these robberies.

De Menou, by turns a nobleman and a sans-culotte, a Christian and a Mussulman, is wicked and profligate, not from the impulse of the moment or of any sudden gust of passion, but coldly and deliberately.  He calculates with sangfroid the profit and the risk of every infamous action he proposes to commit, and determines accordingly.  He owed some riches and the rank of the major-general to the bounty of Louis XVI., but when he considered the immense value of the revolutionary plunder, called national property, and that those who confiscated could also promote, he did not hesitate what party to take.  A traitor is generally a coward; he has everywhere experienced defeats; he was defeated by his Royalist countrymen in 1793, by his Mahometan sectaries in 1800, and by your countrymen in 1801.

Besides his Turkish wife, De Menou has in the same house with her one Italian and two French girls, who live openly with him, but who are obliged to keep themselves by selling their influence and protection, and, perhaps, sometimes even their personal favours.  He has also in his hotel several gambling-tables, where those who are too bashful to address themselves to himself or his mistresses may deposit their donations, and if they are thought sufficient, the hint is taken and their business done.  He never pays any debts and never buys anything for ready money, and all persons