“Have you read this bulletin?”—­“yes, General.”—­“What an ass that Junot is!  It is a long time since I have known that.”—­“How he allows himself to be entrapped!  Is he still here?”—­“I believe so.  I have just seen him, and made observations to him, all in good part, but he would hear nothing.”—­“Tell him to come here.”  When Junot appeared Bonaparte began—­“Imbecile that you are! how could you send me such reports as these?  Do you not read them?  How shall I be sure that you will not compromise other persons equally unjustly?  I want positive facts, not inventions.  It is some time since your agent displeased me; dismiss him directly.”  Junot wanted to justify himself, but Bonaparte cut him short—­“Enough!—­It is settled!”

I related what had passed to Fouche, who told me that, wishing to amuse himself at Junot’s expense, whose police agents only picked up what they heard related in coffeehouses, gaming-houses, and the Bourse, he had given currency to this absurd story, which Junot had credited and reported, as he did many other foolish tales.  Fouche often caught the police of the Palace in the snares he laid for them, and thus increased his own credit.

This circumstance, and others of the same nature, induced the First Consul to attach less importance than at first he had to his secret police, which seldom reported anything but false and silly stories.  That wretched police!  During the time I was with him it embittered his life, and often exasperated him against his wife, his relations, and friends.

   —­[Bourrienne, it must be remembered, was a sufferer from the
   vigilance of this police.]—­

Rapp, who was as frank as he was brave, tells us in his Memoirs (p. 233) that when Napoleon, during his retreat from Moscow, while before Smolenski, heard of the attempt of Mallet, he could not get over the adventure of the Police Minister, Savary, and the Prefect of Police, Pasquier.  “Napoleon,” says Rapp, “was not surprised that these wretches (he means the agents of the police) who crowd the salons and the taverns, who insinuate themselves everywhere and obstruct everything, should not have found out the plot, but he could not understand the weakness of the Duc de Rovigo.  The very police which professed to divine everything had let themselves be taken by surprise.”  The police possessed no foresight or faculty of prevention.  Every silly thing that transpired was reported either from malice or stupidity.  What was heard was misunderstood or distorted in the recital, so that the only result of the plan was mischief and confusion.

The police as a political engine is a dangerous thing.  It foments and encourages more false conspiracies than it discovers or defeats real ones.  Napoleon has related “that M. de la Rochefoucauld formed at Paris a conspiracy in favour of the King, then at Mittau, the first act of which was to be the death of the Chief of the Government:  The plot being discovered, a trusty person belonging to the police was ordered to join it and become one of the most active agents.  He brought letters of recommendation from an old gentleman in Lorraine who had held a distinguished rank in the army of Conde.”  After this, what more can be wanted?  A hundred examples could not better show the vileness of such a system.  Napoleon, when fallen, himself thus disclosed the scandalous means employed by his Government.