blow themselves; and a small committee of French royalists, which had the support of that furious royalist, Mr. Windham, M.P., began even before the close of 1802 to discuss plans for the “removal” of Bonaparte.  Two of their tools, Picot and Le Bourgeois by name, plunged blindly into a plot, and were arrested soon after they set foot in France.  Their boyish credulity seems to have suggested to the French authorities the sending of an agent so as to entrap not only French emigres, but also English officials and Jacobinical generals.

The agent provocateur has at all times been a favourite tool of continental Governments:  but rarely has a more finished specimen of the class been seen than Mehee de la Touche.  After plying the trade of an assassin in the September massacres of 1792, and of a Jacobin spy during the Terror, he had been included by Bonaparte among the Jacobin scapegoats who expiated the Chouan outrage of Nivose.  Pining in the weariness of exile, he heard from his wife that he might be pardoned if he would perform some service for the Consular Government.  At once he consented, and it was agreed that he should feign royalism, should worm himself into the secrets of the emigres at London, and act as intermediary between them and the discontented republicans of Paris.

The man who seems to have planned this scheme was the ex-Minister of Police.  Fouche had lately been deprived by Bonaparte of the inquisitorial powers which he so unscrupulously used.  His duties were divided between Regnier, the Grand Judge and Minister of Justice, and Real, a Councillor of State, who watched over the internal security of France.  These men had none of the ability of Fouche, nor did they know at the outset what Mehee was doing in London.  It may, therefore, be assumed that Mehee was one of Fouche’s creatures, whom he used to discredit his successor, and that Bonaparte welcomed this means of quickening the zeal of the official police, while he also wove his meshes round plotting emigres, English officials, and French generals.[282]

Among these last there was almost chronic discontent, and Bonaparte claimed to have found out a plot whereby twelve of them should divide France into as many portions, leaving to him only Paris and its environs.  If so, he never made any use of his discovery.  In fact, out of this group of malcontents, Moreau, Bernadotte, Augereau, Macdonald, and others, he feared only the hostility of the first.  The victor of Hohenlinden lived in sullen privacy near to Paris, refusing to present himself at the Consular Court, and showing his contempt for those who donned a courtier’s uniform.  He openly mocked at the Concordat; and when the Legion of Honour was instituted, he bestowed a collar of honour upon his dog.  So keen was Napoleon’s resentment at this raillery that he even proposed to send him a challenge to a duel in the Bois de Boulogne.[283] The challenge, of course, was not sent; a show of reconciliation was assumed between the two warriors; but Napoleon retained a covert dislike of the man whose brusque republicanism was applauded by a large portion of the army and by the frondeurs of Paris.