The brief detail I have given in the two or three preceding chapters of
the events which occurred previously to and during the campaign of
Austerlitz, with the letters of Duroc and Bernadotte, may afford the
reader some idea of my situation during the early part of my residence in
Hamburg. Events succeeded each other with such incredible rapidity as to
render my labour excessive. My occupations were different, but not less
laborious, than those which I formerly performed when near the Emperor;
and, besides, I was now loaded with a responsibility which did not attach
to me as the private secretary of General Bonaparte and the First Consul.
I had, in fact, to maintain a constant watch over the emigrants in
Altona, which was no easy matter--to correspond daily with the Minister
for Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Police--to confer with the
foreign Ministers accredited at Hamburg--to maintain active relations
with the commanders of the French army--to interrogate my secret agents,
and keep a strict surveillance over their proceedings; it was, besides,
necessary to be unceasingly on the watch for scurrilous articles against
Napoleon in the Hamburg 'Corespondent'. I shall frequently have occasion
to speak of all these things, and especially of the most marked
emigrants, in a manner less irregular, because what I have hitherto said
may, in some sort, be considered merely as a summary of all the facts
relating to the occurrences which daily passed before my eyes.

In the midst of these multifarious and weighty occupations I received a
packet with the Strasburg postmark at the time the Empress was in that
city. This packet had not the usual form of a diplomatic despatch, and
the superscription announced that it came from the residence of
Josephine. My readers, I venture to presume, will not experience less
gratification than I did on a perusal of its contents, which will be
found at the end of this chapter; but before satisfying the curiosity to
which I have perhaps given birth, I may here relate that one of the