Such was Fouche, and Bonaparte perfectly understood his situation.  He kept the chief in his service until he could find an opportunity of disbanding his undisciplined followers.  But there was one circumstance which confirmed his reliance on Fouche.  He who had voted the death of the King of France, and had influenced the minds of those who had voted with him, offered Bonaparte the best guarantee against the attempts of the Royalists for raising up in favour of the Bourbons the throne which the First Consul himself had determined to ascend.  Thus, for different reasons, Bonaparte and Fouche had common interests against the House of Bourbon, and the master’s ambition derived encouragement from the supposed terror of the servant.

The First Consul was aware of the existence in Paris of a Royalist committee, formed for the purpose of corresponding with Louis XVIII.  This committee consisted of men who must not be confounded with those wretched intriguers who were of no service to their employers, and were not unfrequently in the pay of both Bonaparte and the Bourbons.  The Royalist committee, properly so called, was a very different thing.  It consisted of men professing rational principles of liberty, such as the Marquis de Clermont Gallerande, the Abbe de Montesqiou, M. Becquet, and M. Royer Collard.  This committee had been of long standing; the respectable individuals whose names I have just quoted acted upon a system hostile to the despotism of Bonaparte, and favourable to what they conceived to be the interests of France.  Knowing the superior wisdom of Louis XVIII., and the opinions which he had avowed and maintained in the Assembly of the Notables, they wished to separate that Prince from the emigrants, and to point him out to the nation as a suitable head of a reasonable Constitutional Government.  Bonaparte, whom I have often heard speak on the subject, dreaded nothing so much as these ideas of liberty, in conjunction with a monarchy.  He regarded them as reveries, called the members of the committee idle dreamers, but nevertheless feared the triumph of their ideas.  He confessed to me that it was to counteract the possible influence of the Royalist committee that he showed himself so indulgent to those of the emigrants whose monarchical prejudices he knew were incompatible with liberal opinions.  By the presence of emigrants who acknowledged nothing short of absolute power, he thought he might paralyse the influence of the Royalists of the interior; he therefore granted all such emigrants permission to return.

About this time I recollect having read a document, which had been signed, purporting to be a declaration of the principles of Louis XVIII.  It was signed by M. d’Andre, who bore evidence to its authenticity.  The principles contained in the declaration were in almost all points conformable to the principles which formed the basis of the charter.  Even so early as 1792, and consequently previous to the fatal 21st