was amongst the first persons who set up large factories for the manufacture of sugar from beet-root. And then the negotiations went slowly on. Joseph Bonaparte, in the opinion of Cornwallis, improved into a 'very sensible, modest, gentlemanlike man, totally free from diplomatic chicanery, and fair and open in all his dealings.' To a request from Lady Spencer that certain articles of glass might pass free of duty, Cornwallis found time to answer that though averse to all contraband traffic, he would take care that her glass should be brought over with his own baggage, on his return. Of the society at Amiens an amusing picture is given in a letter from Colonel Nightingale, who was one of the suite of the British Plenipotentiary, to Ross. The majority of the male sex at Amiens might, without deviating from truth, be called rogues, and many of the females, with equal propriety, something worse.
Joseph Bonaparte was the best among them, although he had not the manners of a gentleman. His wife was a vulgar little woman, without anything to say for herself. She had been Mdlle. Clary, and lived down to 1845. To the Prefect was applied the epithet given by one of the friends of Charles Surface to the picture of Sir Oliver. This man had been a member of the National Convention and had voted for the death of the king. Cornwallis, as might be expected, was very civil to all these local notabilities: gave large dinners twice a week, as he had done at
