Josephine, however, did not so assiduously attend to her cashmere shawls as to forget the unfortunate victims of the infernal machine. On the contrary, she saw with deep pain how every one was busy in inculpating others, and in casting suspicions on royalists and Jacobins, so as to give a pretext to punish them. She noticed that all those who wished to gain the consul’s favor were zealous in spying out fresh culprits, for it was well known that Bonaparte was inclined to make of all hostile parties a terrible example, so that, through the severity of the punishment and the number of the punished, he might deter the dissatisfied from any further plots.
Josephine’s compassionate heart was distressed, through sympathy for so many unfortunate persons, whom wicked men maliciously were endeavoring to drag into guilt, so as to have them punished; and the injustice which the judges manifested at every hearing filled her with anger and horror. Ever ready to help the needy, and to protect the persecuted, she addressed herself to Fouche, the minister of police, and requested him to use mildness and compassion. She wrote to him:
“Citizen minister, while trembling at the frightful calamity which has taken place, I feel uneasy and pained at the fear of the punishments which hang over the poor creatures who, I am told, belong to families with which I have been connected in days past. I shall therefore be appealed to by mothers, sisters, and despairing wives; my heart will be lacerated by the sad consciousness that I cannot obtain pardon for all those who implore it.
“The generosity of the consul is great, his affection for me is boundless, I know it well; but the crime is of so awful a nature that he will deem it necessary to make an example of extreme severity. The supreme magistrate was not alone exposed to danger—many others were killed and wounded by this sad event, and it is this which will make the consul severe and implacable.
“I conjure you, then, citizen minister, to avoid extending your researches too far, and not always to spy out new persons who might be compromised by this horrible machine. Must France, which has been held in terror by so many executions, have to sigh over new victims? Is it not much more important to appease the minds of the people than to excite them by new terrors? Finally, would it not be advisable, so soon as the originators of this awful crime are captured, to have compassion and mercy upon subordinate persons who may have been entangled in it through dangerous sophisms and fanatical sentiments?
“Barely vested with the supreme authority, ought not the first consul study to win the hearts rather than to make slaves of his people? Moderate, therefore, by your advice, where in his first excitement he may be too severe. To punish is, alas, too often necessary! To pardon is, I trust, still more. In a word, be a protector to the unfortunate who, through their confession or repentance, have already made in part penance for their guilt.
“As I myself, without any fault on my part, nearly lost my life in the revolution, you can easily understand that I take an interest in those who can perhaps be saved without thereby endangering my husband’s life, which is so precious to me and to France. I therefore earnestly desire that you will make a distinction between the leaders of this conspiracy and those who, from fear or weakness, have been seduced into bringing upon themselves a portion of the guilt. As a woman, a wife, a mother, I can readily feel for all the heart-rending agonies of those families which appeal to me.
“Do what you possibly can, citizen minister, to diminish their numbers; you will thereby spare me much anxiety. I can never be deaf to the cries of distress from the needy; but in this matter you can do a great deal more than I can, and therefore pardon what may seem strange in my pleadings with you.
“Believe in my gratitude and loyalty of sentiment.
“JOSEPHINE.” [Footnote: Ducrest, “Memoires,” vol. iii., p. 231.]