"YESTERDAY I SAW BONAPARTE... I ADMIRED HIM, AND I AM READY TO LOVE HIM...". REGNAUD DE SAINT-JEAN-D'ANGÉLY (Michel-Louis-Étienne). Autograph letter signed with his initial to Marie-Barbe de La Tour. Milan, 16 floréal [5 May 1796]. 2 pp. 3/4 in-4, address on back, vestige of red wax seal, postal mark of the Army of Italy; tear due to opening affecting 2 words. " ... I saw Bonaparte yesterday. He received me and treated me wonderfully. I talked with him for nearly five quarters of an hour. He showed as much abandon as a man whose thoughts are his treasure can show towards a stranger. His phisionomy is a combination of expressive features and loose muscles that seem accustomed to obeying him. They are ready to speak and yet remain silent. He has taken and exerted a visible empire over them. He is pale, and his health appears impaired; his eyes are nevertheless keen and penetrating: his attitude is noble, his bearing dignified, but his back is a little bent... His conversation is easy: it is simple but energetic, his expression strong and natural. He showed me a desire to stop exercising too much power soon. to rest from his long fatigues. And he seemed to mean what he said. I admired him, and I am ready to love him. He announced to me the freedom of La Fayette and his 2 companions in misfortune... May the three unfortunate people finally breathe in a free and hospitable land, the air of liberty that I believe was so well made for them...". General de La Fayette had been taken prisoner by the Austrians, who were holding him in the fortress of Olmütz with Charles-César de Faÿ de La Tour-Maubourg and Jean-Xavier Bureaux de Pusy. He was to be freed when Bonaparte intervened after his successes in Italy. Michel-Louis-Étienne Regnaud de Saint-Jean d'Angély (1760-1819), Napoléon Bonaparte's most trusted confidant and minister, was a lawyer by training. A journalist for a time, he was elected deputy to the Estates-General. Above all, he was appointed Intendant General of Hospitals for the Army of Italy in 1796, where he was able to meet Napoleon Bonaparte and became attached to his service. After leaving for Egypt with him, he was posted to Malta as commissioner of the Republic (June-November 1799). He then joined the group of men who helped Napoleon Bonaparte succeed in his coup d'état of 18 Brumaire: he became a member of the Conseil d'État, where he headed the Interior section (1802), was Attorney General to the Imperial High Court (1804) and Secretary of State in charge of the Imperial Family (1807). Having accepted a ministerial portfolio during the Hundred Days, he was included in the proscription order in 1815, and lived for a time in exile in the United States. He was pardoned in 1819 and died the same day he returned to France. Although Stendhal, in his Souvenirs d'égotisme, described him as a "shameless charlatan" with "energetic coarseness", and the Duchesse d'Abrantès, in her Histoire des salons de Paris (1836-1837), presented him as often unkind or somewhat brutal, she found him to have qualities as an orator, emphasised his great goodness and recalled his unwavering loyalty to Napoleon I. Marie-Barbe Guesnon de Bonneuil, the real second mother of Regnault de Saint-Jean-d'Angély's wife, was in fact her cousin. She had married Louis-Marie Hutot de La Tour, formerly involved in the King's affairs and then administrator of military hospitals, who became one of the largest shareholders in the Banque de France. While Laure's mother was often absent, Madame de La Tour, twenty years her senior, really played a maternal role with her. Regnault, who sometimes called her "mother", seems to have developed a kind of loving friendship with her.