ce to work with an infernal and secret
activity. His conduct at the time of the affair at Walcheren was that of
a consummate soldier, a great politician, a far-seeing administrator. He
was the only real minister that Napoleon ever had. And you all know how
he then alarmed him.

"Fouche, Massena and the Prince," continued de Marsay, reflectively,
"are the three greatest men, the wisest heads in diplomacy, war, and
government, that I have ever known. If Napoleon had frankly allied them
with his work there would no longer be a Europe, only a vast French
Empire. Fouche did not finally detach himself from Napoleon until he saw
Sieyes and the Prince de Talleyrand shoved aside.

"He now went to work, and in three days (all the while hiding the hand
that stirred the ashes of the Montagne) he had organized that general
agitation which then arose all over France and revived the republicanism
of 1793. As it is necessary that I should explain this obscure corner of
our history, I must tell you that this agitation, starting from Fouche's
own hand (which held the wires of the former Montagne), produced
republican plots against the life of the First Consul, which was in
peril from this cause long after the victory of Marengo. It was Fouche's
sense of the evil he had thus brought about which led him to warn
Napoleon, who held a contrary opinion, that republicans were more
concerned than royalists in the various conspiracies.

"Fouche was an admirable judge of men; he relied on Sieyes because of
his thwarted ambition, on Talleyrand because he was a great _seigneur_,
on Carnot for his perfect honesty; but the man he dreaded was the one
whom you have seen here this evening. I will now tell how he entangled
that man in his meshes.

"Malin was only Malin in those days,--a secret agent and correspondent
of Louis XVIII. Fouche now compelled him to reduce to writing all the
proclamations of the proposed revolutionary government, its warrants and
edicts against the factions of the 18th Brumaire. An accomplice against
his own will, Malin was required to have these documents secretly
printed, and the copies held ready in his own house for distribution
if Bonaparte were defeated. The printer was subsequently imprisoned and
detained two months; he died in 1816, and always believed he had been
employed by a Montagnard conspiracy.

"One of the most singular scenes ever played by Fouche's police was
caused by the blunder of an agent, who despatch