The Pavillon Marsan[297] existed at Ghent as in Paris. Every day brought Monsieur news from France which was the offspring of self-interest or imagination.
Fouché, Duc D'Otrante.
M. Gaillard[298], an ex-Oratorian, a counsel in the royal courts, an intimate friend of Fouché's, alighted in our midst; he made himself known, and was brought into touch with M. Capelle.
When I waited upon Monsieur, which was rarely, those around him used to talk to me in covert words, and with many sighs, of "a man who (it must be admitted) was behaving admirably: he was impeding all the Emperor's operations; he was defending the Faubourg Saint-Germain, etc., etc." The faithful Marshal Soult was also the object of Monsieur's predilection and, after Fouché, the most loyal man in France.
One day a carriage stopped at the door of my inn, and I saw Madame la Baronne de Vitrolles step out of it: she had arrived bearing powers from the Duc d'Otrante. She took away with her a note, written in Monsieur's hand, in which the Prince declared that he would retain an eternal gratitude to him who saved M. de Vitrolles. Fouché wanted no more; armed with this note, he was sure of his future in case of a restoration. Thenceforward, there was no question at Ghent save of the immense obligations due to the excellent M. Fouché de Nantes[299], save of the impossibility of returning to France otherwise than by that just man's good pleasure: the difficulty was how to make the King relish this new redeemer of the Monarchy.
After the Hundred Days, Madame de Custine compelled me to meet Fouché at dinner at her house. I had seen him once, five years before, in connection with the condemnation of my poor Cousin Armand. The ex-minister knew that I had opposed his nomination at Roye, at Gonesse, at Arnouville; and, as he suspected me of being powerful, he wished to make his peace with me. The death of Louis XVI. was the best thing about him: regicide was his innocence. A prater, like all the revolutionaries, beating the air with empty phrases, he retailed a heap of commonplaces stuffed with "destiny," with "necessity," with "the right of things," mingling with this philosophic nonsense further nonsense on the march and progress of society, and shameless maxims in favour of the strong as against the weak; and he was free in his use of impudent avowals on the justice of success, the little worth of a head which falls, the equity of that which prospers, the iniquity of that which suffers, affecting to speak of the most horrid disasters with airy indifference, as though he were a genius above all such fooleries. Not a choice idea escaped him, not a remarkable thought, on any subject whatsoever. I went away shrugging my shoulders at crime.
M. Fouché never forgave me my dryness and the small effect he produced on me. He had thought he would fascinate me by causing the blade of the fatal instrument to rise and fall before my eyes, like a glory of Mount Sinai; he had imagined that I would look up, as to a colossus, to the ranter who, speaking of the soil of Lyons, had said:
"That soil shall be overturned; on the ruins of that proud and rebellious city shall rise scattered cottages which the friends of liberty will hasten to come and inhabit.... We shall have the energetic courage to walk through the vast tombs of the conspirators.... Their blood-stained corpses, hurled into the Rhône, give on both banks and at its mouth the impression of terror and the image of the omnipotence of the people. . . . . . . .
"We shall celebrate the victory of Toulon; we shall this evening send two hundred and fifty rebels under the lead of the thunder."
Those horrible trimmings did not impose upon me: because M. "de Nantes" had diluted republican crimes with imperial mire; because the sans-culotte, transformed into a duke, had wrapped the cord of the lantern in the ribbon of the Legion of Honour, he appeared neither the abler nor the greater for it in my eyes. The Jacobins detest men who make no account of their atrocities and who despise their murders; their pride is provoked, like that of authors whose talent one disputes.