les and conduct were already
sufficiently known. No one could be ignorant of the language he held
respecting the Bourbons, and in which he indulged as freely after he
became the Minister of Louis XVIII. as when he was the Minister of
Bonaparte. It was universally known that in his conversation the
Bourbons were the perpetual butt for his sarcasms, that he never
mentioned them but in terms of disparagement, and that he represented
them as unworthy of governing France. Everybody must have been aware
that Fouche, in his heart, favoured a Republic, where the part of
President might have been assigned to him. Could any one have forgotten
the famous postscript he subjoined to a letter he wrote from Lyons to his
worthy friend Robespierre: "To celebrate the fete of the Republic
suitably, I have ordered 250 persons to be shot?" And to this man, the
most furious enemy of the restoration of the monarchy, was consigned the
task of consolidating it for the second time! But it would require
another Claudian to describe this new Rufinus!

Fouche never regarded a benefit in any other light than as the means of
injuring his benefactor. The King, deceived, like many other persons, by
the reputation which Fouche's partisans had conjured up for him, was
certainly not aware that Fouche had always discharged the functions of
Minister in his own interest, and never for the interest of the
Government which had the weakness to entrust him with a power always
dangerous in his hands. Fouche had opinions, but he belonged to no
party, and his political success is explained by the readiness with which
he always served the party he knew must triumph, and which he himself
overthrew in its turn. He maintained himself in favour from the days of
blood and terror until the happy time of the second Restoration only by
abandoning and sacrificing those who were attached to him; and it might
be said that his ruling passion was the desire of continual change. No
man was ever characterised by greater levity or inconstancy of mind. In
all things he looked only to himself, and to this egotism he sacrificed
both subjects and Governments. Such were the secret causes of the sway
exercised by Fouche during the Convention, the Directory, the Empire, the
Usurpation, and after the second return of the Bourbons. He helped to
found and to destroy every one of those successive Governments. Fouche's
character is perfectly unique. I know no other man who, loaded with
honours