PARIS, August, 1805.
MY LORD:--I believe that I have mentioned to you, when in England, that I
was an old acquaintance of Madame Napoleon, and a visitor at the house of
her first husband. When introduced to her after some years’ absence,
during which fortune had treated us very differently, she received me
with more civility than I was prepared to expect, and would, perhaps,
have spoken to me more than she did, had not a look of her husband
silenced her. Madame Louis Bonaparte was still more condescending, and
recalled to my memory what I had not forgotten how often she had been
seated, when a child, on my lap, and played on my knees with her doll.
Thus they behaved to me when I saw them for the first time in their
present elevation; I found them afterwards, in their drawing-rooms or at
their routs and parties, more shy and distant. This change did not much
surprise me, as I hardly knew any one that had the slightest pretension
to their acquaintance who had not troubled them for employment or
borrowed their money, at the same time that they complained of their
neglect and their breach of promises. I continued, however, as much as
etiquette and decency required, assiduous, but never familiar: if they
addressed me, I answered with respect, but not with servility; if not, I
bowed in silence when they passed. They might easily perceive that I did
not intend to become an intruder, nor to make the remembrance of what was
past an apology or a reason for applying for present favours. A lady, on
intimate terms with Madame Napoleon, and once our common friend, informed
me, shortly after the untimely end of the lamented Duc d’ Enghien, that
she had been asked whether she knew anything that could be done for me,
or whether I would not be flattered by obtaining a place in the
Legislative Body or in the Tribunate? I answered as I thought, that were
I fit for a public life nothing could be more agreeable or suit me
better; but, having hitherto declined all employments that might restrain
that independence to which I had accustomed myself from my youth, I was
now too old to enter upon a new career. I added that, though the
Revolution had reduced my circumstances, it had not entirely ruined me. I
was still independent, because my means were the boundaries of my wants.
A week after this conversation General Murat, the governor of this
capital, and Bonaparte’s favourite-brother-in-law, invited me to a
conversation in a note delivered to me by an aide-de-camp, who told me
that he was ordered to wait for my company, or, which was the same, he
had orders not to lose sight of me, as I was his prisoner. Having
nothing with which to reproach myself, and all my written remarks being
deposited with a friend, whom none of the Imperial functionaries could
suspect, I entered a hackney coach without any fear or apprehension; and
we drove to the governor’s hotel.
From the manner in which Murat addressed me, I was soon convinced that if
I had been accused of any error or indiscretion, the accusation could not
be very grave in his eyes. He entered with me into his closet and
inquired whether I had any enemies at the police office. I told him not
to my knowledge.
“Is the Police Minister and Senator, Fouche, your friend?” continued he.
“Fouche,” said I, “has bought an estate that formerly belonged to me; may
he enjoy it with the same peace of mind as I have lost it. I have never
spoken to him in my life.”
“Have you not complained at Madame de la Force’s of the execution of the
ci-devant Duc d’Enghien, and agreed with the other members of her coterie
to put on mourning for him?”
“I have never been at the house of that lady since the death of the
Prince, nor more than once in my life.”
“Where did you pass the evening last Saturday?”--“At the hotel, and in
the assembly of Princesse Louis Bonaparte.”
“Did she see you?”
“I believe that she did, because she returned my salute.”
“You have known Her Imperial Highness a long time?”
“From her infancy.”
“Well, I congratulate you. You have in her a generous protectress. But
for her you would now have been on the way to Cayenne. Here you see the
list of persons condemned yesterday, upon the report of Fouche, to
transportation. Your name is at the head of them. You were not only
accused of being an agent of the Bourbons, but of having intrigued to
become a member of the Legislature, or the Tribunate, that you might have
so much the better opportunity to serve them. Fortunately for you, the
Emperor remembered that the Princesse Louis had demanded such a favour
for you, and he informed her of the character of her protege. This
brought forward your innocence, because it was discovered that, instead
of asking for, you had declined the offer she had made you through the
Empress. Write the Princess a letter of thanks. You have, indeed, had a
narrow escape, but it has been so far useful to you, that Government is
now aware of your having some secret enemy in power, who is not delicate
about the means of injuring you.”
In quitting General Murat, I could not help deploring the fate of a
despot, even while I abhorred his unnatural power. The curses, the
complaints, and reproaches for all the crimes, all the violence, all the
oppression perpetrated in his name, are entirely thrown upon him, while
his situation and occupation do not admit the seeing and hearing
everything and everybody himself. He is often forced, therefore, to
judge according to the report of an impostor; to sanction with his name
the hatred, malignity, or vengeance of culpable individuals; and to
sacrifice innocence to gratify the vile passions of his vilest slave. I
have not so bad an opinion of Bonaparte as to think him capable of
wilfully condemning any person to death or transportation, of whose
innocence he was convinced, provided that person stood not in the way of
his interest and ambition; but suspicion and tyranny are inseparable
companions, and injustice their common progeny. The unfortunate beings
on the long list General Murat showed me were, I dare say, most of them
as innocent as myself, and all certainly condemned unheard. But suppose,
even, that they had been indiscreet enough to put on mourning for a
Prince of the blood of their former Kings, did their imprudence deserve
the same punishment as the deed of the robber, the forger, or the
housebreaker? and, indeed, it was more severe than what our laws inflict
on such criminals, who are only condemned to transportation for some few
years, after a public trial and conviction; while the exile of these
unconvicted, untried, and most probably innocent persons is continued for
life, on charges as unknown to themselves as their destiny and residence
remain to their families and friends. Happy England! where no one is
condemned unheard, and no one dares attempt to make the laws subservient
to his passions or caprice.
As to Fouche’s enmity, at which General Murat so plainly hinted, I had
long apprehended it from what others, in similar circumstances with
myself, had suffered. He has, since the Revolution, bought no less, than
sixteen national estates, seven of the former proprietors of which have
suddenly disappeared since his Ministry, probably in the manner he
intended to remove me. This man is one of the most immoral characters
the Revolution has dragged forward from obscurity. It is more difficult
to mention a crime that he has not perpetrated than to discover a good or
just action that he ever performed. He is so notorious a villain that
even the infamous National Convention expelled him from its bosom, and
since his Ministry no man has been found base enough, in my debased
country, to extenuate, much less to defend, his past enormities. In a
nation so greatly corrupted and immoral, this alone is more than negative
evidence.
As a friar before the Revolution he has avowed, in his correspondence
with the National Convention, that he never believed in a God; and as one
of the first public functionaries of a Republic he has officially denied
the existence of virtue. He is, therefore, as unmoved by tears as by
reproaches, and as inaccessible to remorse as hardened against
repentance. With him interest and bribes are everything, and honour and
honesty nothing. The supplicant or the pleader who appears before him
with no other support than the justice of his cause is fortunate indeed
if, after being cast, he is not also confined or ruined, and perhaps
both; while a line from one of the Bonapartes, or a purse of gold,
changes black to white, guilt to innocence, removes the scaffold waiting
for the assassin, and extinguishes the faggots lighted for the parricide.
His authority is so extensive that on the least signal, with one blow,
from the extremities of France to her centre, it crushes the cot and the
palace; and his decisions, against which there is no appeal, are so
destructive that they never leave any traces behind them, and Bonaparte,
Bonaparte alone, can prevent or arrest their effect.
Though a traitor to his former benefactor, the ex-Director Barras, he
possesses now the unlimited confidence of Napoleon Bonaparte, and, as far
as is known, has not yet done anything to forfeit it,--if private acts of
cruelty cannot, in the agent of a tyrant, be called breach of trust or
infidelity. He shares with Talleyrand the fraternity of the vigilant,
immoral, and tormenting secret police; and with Real, and Dubois, the
prefect of police, the reproduction, or rather the invention, of new
tortures and improved racks; the oubliettes, which are wells or pits dug
under the Temple and most other prisons, are the works of his own
infernal genius. They are covered with trap-doors, and any person whom
the rack has mutilated, or not obliged to speak out; whose return to
society is thought dangerous, or whose discretion is suspected; who has
been imprisoned by mistake, or discovered to be innocent; who is
disagreeable to the Bonapartes, their favourites, or the mistresses of
their favourites; who has displeased Fouche, or offended some other
placeman; any who have refused to part with their property for the
recovery of their liberty, are all precipitated into these artificial
abysses there to be forgotten; or worse, to be starved to death, if they
have not been fortunate enough to break their necks and be killed by the
fall.
The property Fouche has acquired by his robberies within these last
twelve years is at the lowest rate valued at fifty million livres--which
must increase yearly; as a man who disposes of the liberty of fifty
millions of people is also, in a great part, master of their wealth.
Except the chiefs of the Governments and their officers of State, there
exists not an inhabitant of France, Italy, Holland, or Switzerland who
can consider himself secure for an instant of not being seized,
imprisoned, plundered, tortured, or exterminated by the orders of Fouche
and by the hands of his agents.
You will no doubt exclaim, “How can Bonaparte employ, how dares he
confide, in such a man?” Fouche is as able as unprincipled, and, with
the most unfeeling and perverse heart, possesses great talents. There is
no infamy he will not stoop to, and no crime, however execrable, that he
will hesitate to commit, if his Sovereign orders it. He is, therefore, a
most useful instrument in the hand of a despot who, notwithstanding what
is said to the contrary in France, and believed abroad, would cease to
rule the day he became just, and the reign of laws and of humanity
banished terror and tyranny.
It is reported that some person, pious or revengeful, presented some time
ago to the devout mother of Napoleon a long memorial containing some
particulars of the crimes and vices of Fouche and Talleyrand, and
required of her, if she wished to prevent the curses of Heaven from
falling on her son, to inform him of them, that he might cease to employ
men so unworthy of him, and so repugnant to a Divinity. Napoleon, after
reading through the memorial, is stated to have answered his mother, who
was always pressing him to dismiss these Ministers: The memorial, Madame,
contains nothing of what I was not previously informed. Louis XVI. did
not select any but those whom he thought the most virtuous and moral of
men for his Ministers and counsellors; and where did their virtues and
morality bring him? If the writer of the memorial will mention two
honest and irreproachable characters, with equal talents and zeal to
serve me, neither Fouche nor Talleyrand shall again be admitted into my
presence.