Volume 2

Autobiography : being eighty-eight years of the life of a physician / edited, with a brief account of the last years of his life, by his youngest daughter, Paulina B. Granville.

  • Granville, A. B. (Augustus Bozzi), 1783-1872.
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Autobiography : being eighty-eight years of the life of a physician / edited, with a brief account of the last years of his life, by his youngest daughter, Paulina B. Granville. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    28/456 (page 12)
    °? .^ie arc^itect, at whose house in London I had often visited with Mr. Hamilton, and whose son Robert distin- guished himself in his father’s profession, to all of whom in the piesent instance I tried to be of service by escorting them to different places in Paris, acting the part of a cicerone and thus preparing myself to use again the charm- ing language that had become partly rusty. Hie first use I made of that language had been to perform the duty of announcing my arrival in Paris to him who had enabled me to proceed to Italy in a semi-official capacity, giHng him at the same time a brief “account current ” of sums received and expended. Looking to the results, I do not think that any public auditor will decide that so modest a sum of the secret-service money of the Foreign Office as that I spent for services rendered in an important cause can be called in question. The government obtained reliable information, which should have been turned to good account, but_ was not. They were told that there existed every indication of the probable escape of Napoleon from Elba not long after Christmas, unless England and the other guardian powers looked sharp to prevent it. They did nothing of the sort, and Napoleon flew on the wings of his formidable eagle (a few weeks only after the day predicted) from steeple to steeple from Frejus, until it lighted on the central pavilion of the Tuileries ; veteran companions in arms and new in- surrectionists, renegade marshals, and old faithful adherents following in the track of that wonderful triumphal flight. The first of September, 1814, found me still in Paris, and I lingered a few days longer, seduced by a succession of invitations from savants and old English acquaintances, all eager to get some intelligence they could rely upon concern- ing “La jpauvre Italic,” as they called it. However, 1 decided at last to go by a new way to England, and willing to investigate every mode of travelling in France, I tookmiy