pport 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