Now, Fouche knew this counsel; and he was powerful.
“Take care!” M. d’Escorval’s friends wrote him from Paris.
But he put his trust in Providence, and faced the future, threatening though it was, with the unalterable serenity of a pure conscience.
The baron was still young; he was not yet fifty, but anxiety, work, and long nights passed in struggling with the most arduous difficulties of the imperial policy, had made him old before his time.
He was tall, slightly inclined to embonpoint, and stooped a little.
His calm eyes, his serious mouth, his broad, furrowed forehead, and his austere manners inspired respect.
“He must be stern and inflexible,” said those who saw him for the first time.
But they were mistaken.
If, in the exercise of his official duties, this truly great man had the strength to resist all temptations to swerve from the path of right; if, when duty was at stake, he was as rigid as iron, in private life he was as unassuming as a child, and kind and gentle even to the verge of weakness.
To this nobility of character he owed his domestic happiness, that rare and precious happiness which fills one’s existence with a celestial perfume.