Memoirs of Napoleon, vol 15 | Page 5

All at once the door opened, and I saw the President of
the Council enter leaning on the arm of the new minister. Oh,
Louis-le-Desire! Oh, my unfortunate master! you have proved that
there is no sacrifice which your people may not expect from your
paternal heart!"
Fouche was resolved to have his restoration as well as M. de Talleyrand,
who had had his the year before; he therefore contrived to retard the
King's entry into Paris for four days. The prudent members of the
Chamber of Peers, who had taken no part in the King's Government in
1814, were the first to declare that it was for the interest of France to
hasten his Majesty's entrance into Paris, in order to prevent foreigners
from exercising a sort of right of conquest in a city which was a prey to
civil dissension and party influence. Blucher informed me that the way
in which Fouche contrived to delay the King's return greatly
contributed to the pretensions of the foreigners who, he confessed, were
very well pleased to see the population of Paris divided in opinion, and
to hear the alarming cries raised by the confederates of the Faubourgs
when the King was already at St. Denis.
I know for a fact that Louis XVIII. wished to have nothing to do with
Fouche, and indignantly refused to appoint him when he was first
proposed. But he had so nobly served Bonaparte during the Hundred

Days that it was necessary he should be rewarded. Fouche, besides, had
gained the support of a powerful party among the emigrants of the
Faubourg St. Germain, and he possessed the art of rendering himself
indispensable. I have heard many honest men say very seriously that to
him was due the tranquillity of Paris. Moreover, Wellington was the
person by whose influence in particular Fouche was made one of the
counsellors of the King. After all the benefits which foreigners had
conferred upon us Fouche was indeed an acceptable present to France
and to the King.
I was not ignorant of the Duke of Wellington's influence upon the
affairs of the second Restoration, but for a long time I refused to
believe that his influence should have outweighed all the serious
considerations opposed to such a perfect anomaly as appointing Fouche
the Minister of a Bourbon. But I was deceived. France and the King
owed to him Fouche's introduction into the Council, and I had to thank
him for the impossibility of resuming a situation which I had
relinquished for the purpose of following the King into Belgium. Could
I be Prefect of Police under a Minister whom a short time before I had
received orders to arrest, but who eluded my agents? That was
impossible. The King could not offer me the place of Prefect under
Fouche, and if he had I could not have accepted it. I was therefore right
in not relying on the assurances which had been given me; but I confess
that if I had been told to guess the cause why they could not be realised
I never should have thought that cause would have been the
appointment of Fouche as a Minister of the King of France. At first,
therefore, I was of course quite forgotten, as is the custom of courts
when a faithful subject refrains from taking part in the intrigues of the
moment.
I have already frequently stated my opinion of the pretended talent of
Fouche; but admitting his talent to have been as great as was supposed,
that would have been an additional reason for not entrusting the general
police of the kingdom to him. His principles and conduct were already
sufficiently known. No one could be ignorant of the language he held
respecting the Bourbons, and in which be 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