“‘No, a fight, in which Lannes has covered himself with glory. The affair was bloody. Attacked with ten thousand men by eighteen thousand, he was only saved by a division sent to his support. Ott is in full retreat. The Austrian line is broken.’
“‘When did the fight take place?’ asked Carnot.
“‘On the 8th,’ replied Lucien.
“‘And this is the 13th,’ said the sagacious minister. ‘Well, if that is so, the destinies of France are in the scale at the very moment we are speaking.’”
(In fact, the battle of Marengo did begin at dawn of the 14th.)
“‘Four days of fatal uncertainty!’ said Lucien.
“‘Fatal?’ said the minister of foreign affairs, coldly and interrogatively.
“‘Four days,’ echoed Fouche.
“An eye-witness told me,” said de Marsay, continuing the narrative in his own person, “that the consuls, Cambaceres and Lebrun, knew nothing of this momentous news until after the six personages returned to the salon. It was then four in the morning. Fouche left first. That man of dark and mysterious genius, extraordinary, profound, and little understood, but who undoubtedly had the gifts of a Philip the Second, a Tiberius and a Borgia, went at once to work with an infernal and secret activity. His conduct at the time of the affair at Walcheren was that of a consummate soldier, a great politician, a far-seeing administrator. He was the only real minister that Napoleon ever had. And you all know how he then alarmed him.
“Fouche, Massena and the Prince,” continued de Marsay, reflectively, “are the three greatest men, the wisest heads in diplomacy, war, and government, that I have ever known. If Napoleon had frankly allied them with his work there would no longer be a Europe, only a vast French Empire. Fouche did not finally detach himself from Napoleon until he saw Sieyes and the Prince de Talleyrand shoved aside.