The parents of Gouron’s pupils were, with a severe reprimand, informed where their sons had been placed, and where they would be educated in a manner agreeable to the Emperor, who recommended them not to remove them, without a previous notice to the police.  A hatter, of the name of Maille, however, ordered his son home, because he had been sent to a dearer school than the former.  In his turn he was carried before the police, and, after a short examination of a quarter of an hour, was permitted, with his wife and two children, to join their friend Gouron at Rochefort, and to settle with him at Cayenne, where lands would also be given him for his property, in France.  These particulars were related to me by a neighbour whose son had, for two years previous to this, been under Gouron’s care, but who was now among those placed out by our Government.  The boy’s present master, he said, was a man of a notoriously bad and immoral character; but he was intimidated, and weak enough to remain contented, preferring, no doubt, his personal safety to the future happiness of his child.  In your country, you little comprehend what a valuable instrument terror has been in the hands of our rulers since the Revolution, and how often fear has been mistaken abroad for affection and content.

All these minutiae and petty vexations, but great oppressions, of petty tyrants, you may easily guess, take up a great deal of time, and that, therefore, a Minister of Police, though the most powerful, is also the most occupied of his colleagues.  So he certainly is, but, last year, a new organization of this Ministry was regulated by Bonaparte; and Fouche was allowed, as assistants, four Counsellors of State, and an augmentation of sixty-four police commissaries.  The French Empire was then divided into four arrondissements, with regard to the general police, not including Paris and its vicinity, inspected by a prefect of police under the Minister.  Of the first of these arrondissements, the Counsellor of State, Real, is a kind of Deputy Minister; the Counsellor of State, Miot, is the same of the second; the Counsellor of State, Pelet de la Lozere, of the third; and the Counsellor of State, Dauchy, of the fourth.  The secret police agents, formerly called spies, were also considerably increased.

LETTER XXVIII.

Paris, October, 1805.

My lord:—­Before Bonaparte set out for the Rhine, the Pope’s Nuncio was for the first time publicly rebuked by him in Madame Bonaparte’s drawing-room, and ordered loudly to write to Rome and tell His Holiness to think himself fortunate in continuing to govern the Ecclesiastical States, without interfering with the ecclesiastical arrangements that might be thought necessary or proper by the Government in France.