M. de Talleyrand was almost the only one among the ministers who did not flatter Bonaparte, and who really served both the First Consul and the Emperor.  When Bonaparte said to M. de Talleyrand, “Write so and so, and send it off by a special courier,” that minister was never in a hurry to obey the order, because he knew the character of the First Consul well enough to distinguish between what his passion dictated and what his reason would approve:  in short, he appealed from Philip drunk to Philip sober.  When it happened that M. de Talleyrand suspended the execution of an order, Bonaparte never evinced the least displeasure.  When, the day after he had received any hasty and angry order, M. de Talleyrand presented himself to the First Consul, the latter would say, “Well, did you send off the courier?”—­“No,” the minister would reply, “I took care not to do so before I showed you my letter.”  Then the First Consul would usually add, “Upon second thoughts I think it would be best not to send it.”  This was the way to deal with Bonaparte.  When M. de Talleyrand postponed sending off despatches, or when I myself have delayed the execution of an order which I knew had been dictated by anger, and had emanated neither from his heart nor his understanding, I have heard him say a hundred times, “It was right, quite right.  You understand me:  Talleyrand understands me also.  This is the way to serve me:  the others do not leave me time for reflection:  they are too precipitate.”  Fouche also was one of those who did not on all occasions blindly obey Bonaparte’s commands.  His other ministers, on the other hand, when told to send off a courier the next morning, would have more probably sent him off the same evening.  This was from zeal, but was not the First Consul right in saying that such zeal was unfortunate?

Of Talleyrand and Fouche, in their connections with the First Consul, it might be said that the one represented the Constituent Assembly, with a slight perfume of the old regime, and the other the Convention in all its brutality.  Bonaparte regarded Fouche as a complete personification of the Revolution.  With him, therefore, Fouche’s influence was merely the influence of the Revolution.  That great event was one of those which had made the most forcible impression on Bonaparte’s ardent mind, and he imagined he still beheld it in a visible form as long as Fouche continued at the head of his police.  I am now of opinion that Bonaparte was in some degree misled as to the value of Fouche’s services as a minister.  No doubt the circumstance of Fouche being in office conciliated those of the Revolutionary party who were his friends.  But Fouche cherished an undue partiality for them, because he knew that it was through them he held his place.  He was like one of the old Condottieri, who were made friends of lest they should become enemies, and who owed all their power to the soldiers enrolled under their banners.