Chapter 95

have been misinformed. However, I was certain that M. Bouvier would not have sent me the information on slight grounds, and I therefore supposed that the project had only been delayed. I was not wrong in my conjecture, for at length the letter arrived. To what a depth of infamy men can descend! The letter was from a man whom I had known at Hamburg, whom I had obliged, whom I had employed as a spy. His epistle was a miracle of impudence. After relating some extraordinary transactions which he said had taken place between us, and which all bore the stamp of falsehood, he requested me to send him by return of post the sum of 60,000 francs on account of what I had promised him for some business he executed in England by the direction of M. de Talleyrand, General Rapp, and myself. Such miserable wretches are often caught in the snares they spread for others. This was the case in the present instance, for the fellow had committed, the blunder of fixing upon the year 1802 as the period of this pretended business in England, that is to say, two years before my appointment as Minister-Plenipotentiary to the Hanse Towns. This anachronism was not the only one I discovered in the letter.

I took a copy of the letter, and immediately carried the original to the Duc de Rovigo, as had been agreed between us. When I waited on the Minister he was just preparing to go to the Emperor. He took with him the letter which I brought, and also the letter which announced its arrival. As the Duc de Rovigo entered the audience-chamber Napoleon advanced to meet him, and apostrophised him thus: "Well, I have learned fine things of your Bourrienne, whom you are always defending." The fact was, the Emperor had already received a copy of the letter, which had been opened at the Hamburg post-office. The Duc de Rovigo told the Emperor that he had long known what his Majesty had communicated to him. He then entered into a full explanation of the intrigue, of which it was wished to render me the victim, and proved to him the more easily the falsehood of my accusers by reminding him that in 1802 I was not in Hamburg, but was still in his service at home.

It may be supposed that I was too much interested in knowing what had passed at the Tuileries not to return to the Duc de Rovigo the same day. I learned from him the particulars which I have already related. He added that he had observed to the Emperor that there was no connection between Rapp and M. Talleyrand which could warrant the suspicion of their being concerned in the affair in question. "When Napoleon saw the matter in its true light," said Savary, "when I proved to him the palpable existence of the odious machination, he could not find terms to express his indignation. 'What baseness, what horrible villainy!' he exclaimed; and gave me orders to arrest and bring to Paris the infamous writer of the letter; and you may rely upon it his orders shall be promptly obeyed."

Savary, as he had said, instantly despatched orders for the arrest of the writer, whom he directed to be sent to France. On his arrival he was interrogated respecting the letter. He declared that he had written it at the instigation and under the dictation of Marshal Davoust, for doing which he received a small sum of money as a reward. He also confessed that when the letter was put into the post the Prince of Eckmuhl ordered the Director of the Post to open it, take a copy, then seal it again, and send it to its address--that is to say, to me--and the copy to the Emperor. The writer of the letter was banished to Marseilles, or to the Island of Hyeres, but the individual who dictated it continued a Marshal, a Prince, and a Governor-General, and still looked forward to the Viceroyalty of Poland! Such was the discriminating justice of the Empire; and Davoust continued his endeavours to revenge himself by other calumnies for my not having considered him a man of talent. I must do the Duc de Rovigo the justice to say that, though his fidelity to Napoleon was as it always had been, boundless, yet whilst he executed the Emperor's orders he endeavoured to make him acquainted with the truth, as was proved by his conduct in the case I have just mentioned. He was much distressed by the sort of terror which his appointment had excited in the public, and he acknowledged to me that he intended to restore confidence by a more mild system than that of his predecessor. I had observed formerly that Savary did not coincide in the opinion I had always entertained of Fouché, but when once the Duc de Rovigo endeavoured to penetrate the labyrinth of police, counter-police, inspections and hierarchies of espionage, he found they were all bugbears which Fouché had created to alarm the Emperor, as gardeners put up scarecrows among the fruit-trees to frighten away the sparrows. Thus, thanks to the artifices of Fouché, the eagle was frightened as easily as the sparrows, until the period when the Emperor, convinced that Fouché was maintaining a correspondence with England through the agency of Ouvrard, dismissed him.

I saw with pleasure that Savary, the Minister of Police, wished to simplify the working of his administration, and to gradually diminish whatever was annoying in it, but, whatever might be his intentions, he was not always free to act. I acknowledge that when I read his Memoirs I saw with great impatience that in many matters he had voluntarily assumed responsibilities for acts which a word from him might have attributed to their real author. However this may be, what much pleased me in Savary was the wish he showed to learn the real truth in order to tell it to Napoleon. He received from the Emperor more than one severe rebuff. This came from the fact that since the immense aggrandisement of the Empire the ostensible Ministers, instead of rising in credit, had seen their functions diminish by degrees. Thus proposals for appointments to the higher grades of the army came from the cabinet of Berthier, and not from that of the Minister-of-War. Everything which concerned any part of the government of the Interior or of the Exterior, except for the administration of War and perhaps for that of Finance, had its centre in the cabinet of M. Maret, certainly an honest man, but whose facility in saying "All is right," so much helped to make all wrong.

The home trade, manufactures, and particularly several of the Parisian firms were in a state of distress the more hurtful as it contrasted so singularly with the splendour of the Imperial Court since the marriage of Napoleon with Maria Louisa. In this state of affairs a chorus of complaints reached the ears of the Duc de Rovigo every day. I must say that Savary was never kinder to me than since my disgrace; he nourished my hope of getting Napoleon to overcome the prejudices against me with which the spirit of vengeance had inspired him, and I know for certain that Savary returned to the charge more than once to manage this. The Emperor listened without anger, did not blame him for the closeness of our intimacy, and even said to him some obliging but insignificant words about me. This gave time for new machinations against me, and to fill him with fresh doubts when he had almost overcome his former, ideas.