The ingratitude or rather the distrust shown by Napoleon after the affair at Walcheren, gives the key-note to the character of a man who, unfortunately for himself, was not a great seigneur, and whose conduct was modelled on that of Talleyrand.  At that time neither his former colleagues nor his present ones had suspected the amplitude of his genius, which was purely ministerial, essentially governmental, just in its forecasts and incredibly sagacious.  To-day, every impartial historian perceives that Napoleon’s inordinate self-love was among the chief causes of his fall, a punishment which cruelly expiated his wrong-doing.  In the mind of that distrustful sovereign lurked a constant jealousy for his own rising power, which influenced all his actions, and caused his secret hatred for men of talent, the precious legacy of the Revolution, with whom he might have made himself a cabinet capable of being a true repository for his thoughts.  Talleyrand and Fouche were not the only ones who gave him umbrage.  The misfortune of usurpers is that those who have given them a crown are as much their enemies as those from whom they snatch it.  Napoleon’s sovereignty was never convincingly felt by those who were once his superiors or his equals, nor by those who still held to the doctrine of rights; none of them regarded their oath of allegiance to him as binding.

Malin, an inferior man, incapable of comprehending Fouche’s hidden genius, or of distrusting his own perceptions, burned himself, like a moth in a candle, by asking him confidentially to send agents to Gondreville, where, he said, he hoped to obtain certain clues to the conspiracy.  Fouche, without alarming his friend by any questions, asked himself why Malin was going to Gondreville, and why he did not immediately and without loss of time, give the information he already possessed.  The ex-Oratorian, fed from his youth up on trickery, and well aware of the double part played by a good many of the conventionals, said to himself:  “From whom is Malin likely to obtain information when we ourselves know little or nothing?” Fouche concluded therefore that there was some either latent or prospective collusion, and took care to say nothing about it to the First Consul.  He preferred to make Malin his instrument rather than destroy him.  It was Fouche’s habit to keep to himself a good part of the secrets he detected, and he thus obtained for his own purposes a power over those concerned which was even greater than that of Bonaparte.  This duplicity was one of the Emperor’s charges against his minister.

Fouche knew of the swindling transaction by which Malin became possessed of Gondreville and which led him to keep his eyes so anxiously on the Simeuse brothers.  These gentlemen were now serving in the army of Conde; Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne was their cousin; possibly they were in her neighborhood, and were sharers in the conspiracy; if so, it would implicate the house of Conde to which they were devoted.  Talleyrand