and Caffarelli’s letter presaged no good; what would it be when it became known that the gendarme assassins had acted with the authorisation of the government?  Happily, a confusion arose that retarded the discovery of the truth.  In the hope of determining the dead man’s identity, the Mayor of Luc had exposed the body to view, and many had come to see it, including some people from Caen.  Four of these had unanimously recognised the corpse as that of a clock-maker of Paris, named Morin-Cochu, well known at the fairs of Lower Normandy.  Fouche allowed the public to follow this false trail, and it was wonderful to see his lieutenants, Desmarets, Veyrat, Real himself, looking for Morin-Cochu all over Paris as if they were ignorant of the personality of their victim.  And when Morin-Cochu was found alive and well in his shop in the Rue Saint-Denis, which he had not left for four years, they began just as zealously to look for his agent Festau, who might well be the murdered man.

Caffarelli, however, was not to be caught in this clumsy trap.  He knew how matters stood now, and showed his indignation.  He wrote very courageously to Real:  “You will doubtless ask me, M. le Comte, why I have not tried to show up the truth?  My answer is simple:  it is publicly rumoured that the expedition of the gendarmes was ordered by M. the Senator Comte de P——­, to whom were given the papers found on the murdered man, and who has gone to Paris, no doubt to transmit them to his Excellency the Minister of Police.  Ought I not to respect the secret of the authorities?”

And all that had occurred in his department for the two last years that it had not been considered advisable to tell him of, all the irregularities that in his desire for peace he had thought he should shut his eyes to, all the affronts that he had patiently endured, came back to his mind.  He felt his heart swell with disgust at cowardly acts, dishonourable tools, and odious snares, and nobly explained his feelings: 

“Certainly I am not jealous of executing severe measures and I should like never to have any of that kind to enforce.  But I owe it to myself as well as to the dignity of my office not to remain prefect in name only, and if any motives whatever can destroy confidence in me to this point on important matters I must simply be told of it and I shall know how to resign without murmuring.  It is not permissible to treat a man whose honesty and zeal cannot be mistaken, in the manner in which I have been treated for some time.  I cannot conceal from you, M. le Comte, that I am keenly wounded at the measures that have been taken towards me.  It has been thought better to put faith in people of tarnished and despicable reputation, the terror of families, than in a man who has only sought the good of the country he represented, and known no other ambition than that of acting wisely.”