"I HAVE ALWAYS FELT SO COMFORTABLE WITH THIS FULL CONFIDENCE IN FORTUNE...". DAVOUT (Louis-Nicolas). Autograph letter signed to his wife Aimée Leclerc. Warsaw, 24 December [1807]. 3 pp. in-4. "You must have received... already in several of my letters the advice to use some of the 300,000 f. made available to me by the emperor to buy a hotel [Aimée Leclerc was going to buy for them the Parisian hotel known at the time as the 'Hotel de Monaco', in the rue Saint-Dominique, until then occupied by the ambassador of the Sublime Porte], you must have received, I say, already the advice to use part of it to satisfy your crippling debts. You will have seen, as I told you, that you will be able to replace this loan very quickly: you must already have received 19,000 f.. Then I told you that I would send you 20 to 30,000 francs in January. That's already nearly 50,000 francs that you can use to replace the 80,000 francs you intend to take out. The rest will soon come from the savings I will make on my income from Poland [produced by the former principality of Łowicz, west of Warsaw, which Napoleon I had just given him as a majorate]. These revenues will amount to more than 400,000 f. I still hope to sell part of the mills at a great advantage. I also hope to sell a beautiful palace which, according to all appearances, belongs to me, as it is listed in all the inventories of the principality's property. Finally, for the renewal of the leases, I will require one year's payment in advance and, as I have already told you, there will no longer be any difficulty. So you can see that everything should put your mind at rest. I will be very pleased to hear that you are no longer so worried and that you are not so concerned about the future. This kind of foresight is not wisdom, it poisons the present without providing any means for the future. I have always found myself in such full confidence in Fortune that out of gratitude for this lady I have to preach this moral to you. I have always found myself in this frame of mind, even before I experienced any signs of benevolence from the Emperor, because since that time I would consider myself a fool if I worried for a moment about your fate and that of our children... You know that this character is not based on selfishness or indifference, above all: then this confidence, instead of being a quality, would be a vice all the more odious because my wife and children would be its victims... Your faithful and good husband L. Davout". On Marshal Davout's role in Poland and Aimée Leclerc, see no. 218 above.