From Dunkirk the First Consul proceeded to Antwerp, where also he had assembled experienced men to ascertain their opinions respecting the surest way of attempting a landing, the project of which was merely a pretence.  The employment of large ships of was, after rang discussions, abandoned in favour of a flotilla.

—­[At this period a caricature (by Gillray) appeared in London. which was sent to Paris, and strictly sought after by the police.  One of the copies was shown to the First Consul, who was highly indignant at it.  The French fleet was represented by a number of nut-shells.  An English sailor, seated on a rock, was quietly smoking his pipe, the whiffs of which were throwing the whole squadron into disorder.—­Bourrienne.  Gillray’s caricatures should be at the reader’s side during the perusal of this work, also English Caricature and Satire on Napoleon I., by J. Ashton Chatto:  and Windus, 1884.]—­

After visiting Belgium, and giving directions there, the First Consul returned from Brussels to Paris by way of Maestricht, Liege, and Soissons.

Before my visit to the Tuileries, and even before the rupture of the peace of Amiens, certain intriguing speculators, whose extravagant zeal was not less fatal to the cause of the Bourbons than was the blind subserviency of his unprincipled adherents to the First Consul, had taken part in some underhand manoeuvres which could have no favourable result.  Amongst these great contrivers of petty machinations the well-known Fauche Borel, the bookseller of Neufchatel, had long been conspicuous.  Fauche Borel, whose object was to create a stir, and who wished nothing better than to be noticed and paid, failed not to come to France as soon as the peace of Amiens afforded him the opportunity.  I was at that time still with Bonaparte, who was aware of all these little plots, but who felt no personal anxiety on the subject, leaving to his police the care of watching their authors.

The object of Fauche Borel’s mission was to bring about a reconciliation between Moreau and Pichegru.  The latter general, who was banished on the 18th Fructidor 4th (September 1797), had not obtained the First Consul’s permission to return to France.  He lived in England, where he awaited a favourable opportunity for putting his old projects into execution.  Moreau was in Pains, but no longer appeared at the levees or parties of the First Consul, and the enmity of both generals against Bonaparte, openly avowed on the part of Pichegru; and still disguised by Moreau, was a secret to nobody.  But as everything was prosperous with Bonaparte he evinced contempt rather than fear of the two generals.  His apprehensions were, indeed, tolerably allayed by the absence of the one and the character of the other.  Moreau’s name had greater weight with the army than that of Pichegru; and those who were plotting the overthrow of the Consular Government knew that that measure could not be attempted with