Immediately on his elevation to the Imperial dignity, Buonaparte re-appointed Fouché to the Ministry of Police, and on the creation of the new Nobility, invested him with the title of Duke of Otranto. Of the machinery of his office he does not tell us enough to satisfy curiosity, though amply enough to convince us of the iniquity and baseness which conducted it. He had salaried spies in all ranks and orders of both sexes, at 1,000 or 2,000 francs per month, according to their services. Their Reports were delivered in writing, and were laid before the Emperor every three months, both in order to prevent any double employment, and also that the benefits conferred on the State might receive fitting reward either by pay or places. In the department of foreign Police, individuals were purchased or pensioned and commissioned to reside in each principal town. The State prisons, the gendarmerie, the granting of passports, were under the control of the Minister of Police, and save the Old man of the Mountain, or the Chief of the Brothers of the Rosy Cross, no single person ever appears to have wielded such terrific secret engines as Fouché. This establishment necessarily demanded several millions, which were provided by means equally good and honourable with the object which they were destined to support; namely, by taxes on gambling and prostitution. Perrein, the officer, superintendentgeneral of gaming houses, extended his paternal care over all the chief towns of the empire, and farmed the receipts for a rent of 14 millions yearly, besides a payment to the Minister of Police of 3,000 francs per day. So unlimited was the power of this corrupt and debasing espionage, that whereever four persons had met together, eyes and ears in the pay of Fouché were believed to be present, and there was not a hearth in Paris, perhaps, nor many within the borders of France, into which his agents did not in some form or other insinuate themselves.

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At his Coronation, notwithstanding the presence of the Pope, Buonaparte, with his own hands, placed the crown on his own head. On visiting Italy for the same purpose, was so forcibly struck by the magnificence of Genoa and the delices of the neighbourhood, that he exclaimed, "This is, indeed, worth a war." The descent upon England was now the great object of his thoughts. To land seemed his only difficulty: this once accomplished, London was a sure prey, and there a popular party would easily be raised to destroy the Government. "All our secret information," adds Fouché, "shows us the feasibility of it." Yet a few pages farther, however, he admits that the invasion of Bavaria, with which

the Austrians commenced the new continental war, was " a fortunate diversion," for the Emperor; that" it saved his maritime honour, and probably preserved him from a disaster which would have destroyed both himself and his nascent Empire. There is no inconsistency in these passages, for Fouché plainly considered the channel to be impassable. It is worth while to see what were Buonaparte's objects in England.

"It was a revolution in earnest which Buonaparte wished to effect in England; he thirsted with a desire to strangle the liberty of the press, and the liberty of parliamentary discussion. Induced to wish for the moment when he could behold that island in her turn delivered up to the horrors of a political revolution, he sent envoys there, who deceivêd him as to his actual condition. I told him a hundred times, that England was as powerful by the effect of her institutions as of her naval force; but he preferred believing the representations of interested spies. It was in the hope of causing internal dissensions to explode, that during the year 1811, he chiefly occupied himself with the project of entirely excluding English commerce from the Continent. His emissaries did not fail to attribute the distress of the manufactures in that kingdom to the continental blockade, as well as the numerous bankruptcies, which, during the course of that same year, struck deadly blows at the stability of English credit. They announced the approximation of serious tumults; and maintained that England could not much longer support a state of war, which cost her more than fifty millions sterling.

"In fact, tumultuous meetings of work-people without work broke out in Nottinghamshire. The mutineers assembled in organized bodies, burnt or destroyed the looms, and committed all kinds of excess. They described themselves to be under the orders of a Captain Ludd, an imaginary personage, whence they derived the name of Luddites. The Emperor considered this in the light of a national wound, which it was his policy to enlarge, like that of Ireland. In a short time, indeed, the system of insurrection extended its sphere of action, and involved the neighbouring counties of Derby and Leicester. It was affirmed in the cabinet of Napoleon, that persons of note were not strangers to the commotion, and were even its instigators." Vol. II. p. 65.

Mack was corrupted and surrendered Ulm. Almost all the Austrian staff-officers were virtually gained over to the French, and the Coalition melted away. But the great disaster at Trafalgar checked Buonaparte's joy. He was upon the Vienna road when the fatal despatch arrived. Berthier who was seated at the same table with him, read it first, but not daring to present it openly, he pushed it gradually with his elbow under his eyes. Buonaparte hastily glanced through its contents, and starting up full of rage,

cried, "I cannot be every where!" His agitation was extreme, and Berthier despaired of tranquillizing him.

It was on the death of Hortense's boy that Buonaparte is said to have first thought of his divorce from Josephine, who already, as it seems, might have sued for a restitution of conjugal rights. Fouché either prompted or seconded his inclination by a written memoir, suggesting the necessity of another marriage; and then having sounded and discovered the Emperor's intentions, he took upon himself, unbidden, to communicate them to Josephine. She received the intelligence with profound agitation; and on the following day a passionate and affecting explanation took place between the principals. Buonaparte disowned Fouché, but refused to accede to Josephine's request for his dismissal. She then proposed a fictitious pregnancy; but the wily Minister had anticipated even the resource, and she was forced to relinquish it, when Buonaparte showed her from the Police reports, that the possibility of such a fraud had already been bruited abroad. It was not, however, till the successful termination of the campaign at Wagram, that Buonaparte's resolution was finally avowed; and when he informed Josephine of it at a tete a tete dinner, she fainted away. The new marriage was the forerunner of Fouché's second disgrace. The particulars which he gives of the avant negociations with the Courts of Petersburgh and Vienna, are full of interest; but we have not room to extract them. It is more to our purpose to show Fouché's individual feeling: "Gifted with what is called tact, I had a secret presentiment that my ministerial power would not long survive the new order of things." "I was also firmly convinced, that he would never pardon my having, of myself, raised an army, forced the English to reimbark, and saved Belgium." He had done still more, he had employed an agent without Buonaparte's knowledge, to sound the English minister as to peace. The Emperor was similarly, employed at the same time; and the Marquis Wellesley suspecting treachery from the double propositions, refused both of them. Buonaparte unravelled the mystery, and taxed Fouché in full Council, with making peace and war without his privity. He was peremptorily dismissed, and replaced by Savary. The following were his consolation under dis

grace:

"I should certainly have made a prediction rather premature, by recalling the words of the prophet: In forty days, Nineveh shall be destroyed; but I might have predicted, with confidence, that in less than four years the empire of Napoleon would no longer exist.” Vol. I. p. 357.

"I confess, that there never was a more despotic police than that whose sceptre I grasped; but will you not also admit that there never was a more protecting police under a military government; more adverse to violence; more gentle in the means by which it pervaded the secret recesses of domestic life, and the operation of which was less obnoxiously obvious? Will you not, therefore, admit, that the Duke of Otranto was beyond a doubt the most skilful and the most moderate of all Napoleon's ministers ?" Vol. II. p. 2.

"During my recent humiliations, and during my great misfortunes, can I forget that I was once the supporter and supervisor of an immense empire; that my disapprobation only endangered its subsistence; and that it ran the risk of tumbling to pieces whenever I withdrew my sustaining hand? Can I forget, that if by the effect of a great re-action, and of a revolution which I foresaw, I again repossessed myself of the scattered elements of so much greatness and power, that the whole vanished like a dream? Yet, nevertheless, I was considered as far superior, in consequence of my long experience I may add, perhaps of my sagacity-to all those, who, during the catastrophe, suffered the power to escape." Vol. II. p. 3.

An Imperial decree in 1813, constituted Fouché Governor of Rome. Before he set off, Buonaparte demanded all his secret correspondence and confidential orders. These he concealed before the arrival of Berthier, and the commission which was sent to obtain them; and having amused the messengers by the surrender and examination of some unimportant documents, he sent them back to meet the råge of Buonaparte, who instantly pronounced, that they had been tricked, that they were imbecilles, that Berthier was no better than an old woman, and that he had suffered himself to be mystified by the craftiest man in the Empire.

"The next day at nine o'clock in the morning, having concerted my plan, I hastened to Saint Cloud, and there presented myself to the grand maréchal of the palace. Here I am,' said I to Duroc ; 'I am prompted by the most urgent interest, to see the Emperor without delay, and to prove to him, that I am very far from deserving his cruel mistrust, and unjust suspicion. Tell him, I entreat you, that I am waiting in your closet, till he deigns to grant me a few minutes audience.' I will go instantly,' replied Duroc, and I am very glad to see that you have mixed a little water with your wine. Such was the exact phrase he used, and it squared with the idea which I wished to give him of my deportment. Duroc, returning, took me by the hand, led me forward, and left me in the Emperor's closet. From the first aspect and deportment of Napoleon, I guessed what was passing in his mind. Without giving me time to say a single word, he embraced me, flattered me, and went even so far as to testify a kind of repentance for the dissatisfaction he had expressed with regard to me; then, with an accent which seemed to say that he himself offered me a pledge of reconciliation,

he concluded by requiring, and, in short, demanding his correspondence. Sire,' I replied with a determined tone, I have burnt it.' That is not true; I must have it,' replied he, with compressed vehemence and anger. It is reduced to ashes'- Withdraw !! These words were pronounced with a scowling motion of the head, and a withering look. ‹ But, Sire'—' Withdraw, I say!' This was repeated with such emphasis as to dissuade me from staying. I held ready in my hand a brief memorial, which I laid on the table as I retired; an action which I accompanied with a respectful bow. The emperor, bursting with anger, seized the paper, and tore it to pieces." Vol. II. p. 18.

To the farther threats of the Emperor, Fouché returned, through Berthier, the following reply:" Tell him, that I have been accustomed, for these five-and-twenty years, to sleep with my head on the scaffold; that I know the extent of his power, but that I do not fear it; and add, that if he wishes to make a Strafford of me, he is at full liberty so to do." The resemblance of this ex-Sir Richard Birnie, to the wronged and murdered Wentworth, cannot fail to occur to every reader. Discretion, however, mingled with his valour; and after really sending, or perhaps only mentally framing this magnanimous message, he took post for the frontiers, and sought refuge in Florence. Even here he considered himself unsafe, and he embarked at Leghorn for America. But oh! lame and impotent conclusion! a violent sea-sickness, which loaded his bosom and tore his entrails," drove him again on land, and induced him to refuse the generous offer of an English captain, who promised to convey him to our island, assuring him," at the same time, such attention and antidotes, as would secure him against the return of seasickness."

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He now resolved to commit himself to the protection of the Grand Duchess Elise, Buonaparte's sister. Through her. he forwarded a penitential letter to the Thuilleries, offered to exchange his papers for an indemnity for all past acts executed under Buonaparte's orders, and requested permission to retire to Aix. The bargain was readily struck, and Fouché was again out of danger.

Ennui pursued him to his retirement; and a feeling, which he well describes as "the inveterate custom and desire to know every thing," still haunted him. To gratify this craving he arranged a regular correspondence, and established. a sort of counter-police. By this he learned the particulars of the disgrace of the King of Holland, Lucien, and of Pauline Borghese, the favourite sister of Buonaparte.. Fouché describes Pauline as beautiful, full of levity, inconsistency and