of January, Louis XVI., who knew the opinions of M. de Clermont Gallerande, sent him on a mission to Coblentz to inform the Princes from him, and the Queen, that they would be ruined by their emigration.  I am accurately informed, and I state this fact with the utmost confidence.  I can also add with equal certainty that the circumstance was mentioned by M. de Clermont Gallerande in his Memoirs, and that the passage relative to his mission to Coblentz was cancelled before the manuscript was sent to press.

During the Consular Government the object of the Royalist committee was to seduce rather than to conspire.  It was round Madame Bonaparte in particular that their batteries were raised, and they did not prove ineffectual.  The female friends of Josephine filled her mind with ideas of the splendour and distinction she would enjoy if the powerful hand which had chained the Revolution should raise up the subverted throne.  I must confess that I was myself, unconsciously, an accomplice of the friends of the throne; for what they wished for the interest of the Bourbons I then ardently wished for the interest of Bonaparte.

While endeavours were thus made to gain over Madame Bonaparte to the interest of the royal family, brilliant offers were held out for the purpose of dazzling the First Consul.  It was wished to retemper for him the sword of the constable Duguesclin; and it was hoped that a statue erected to his honour would at once attest to posterity his spotless glory and the gratitude of the Bourbons.  But when these offers reached the ears of Bonaparte he treated them with indifference, and placed no faith in their sincerity.  Conversing on the subject one day with M. de La Fayette he said, “They offer me a statue, but I must look to the pedestal.  They may make it my prison.”  I did not hear Bonaparte utter these words; but they were reported to me from a source, the authenticity of which may be relied on.

About this time, when so much was said in the Royalist circles and in the Faubourg St. Germain, of which the Hotel de Luynes was the headquarters, about the possible return of the Bourbons, the publication of a popular book contributed not a little to direct the attention of the public to the most brilliant period of the reign of Louis XIV.  The book was the historical romance of Madame de la Valloire, by Madame de Genlis, who had recently returned to France.  Bonaparte read it, and I have since understood that he was very well pleased with it, but he said nothing to me about it.  It was not until some time after that he complained of the effect which was produced in Paris by this publication, and especially by engravings representing scenes in the life of Louis XIV., and which were exhibited in the shop-windows.  The police received orders to suppress these prints; and the order was implicitly obeyed; but it was not Fouche’s police.  Fouche saw the absurdity of interfering with trifles.  I recollect that immediately after