It may be supposed that I was too much interested in knowing what had passed at the Tuileries not to return to the Duc de Rovigo the same day.  I learned from him the particulars which I have already related.  He added that he had observed to the Emperor that there was no connection between Rapp and M. Talleyrand which could warrant the suspicion of their being concerned in the affair in question.  “When Napoleon saw the matter in its true light,” said Savary, “when I proved to him the palpable existence of the odious machination, he could not find terms to express his indignation.  ‘What baseness, what horrible villainy!’ he exclaimed; and gave me orders to arrest and bring to Paris the infamous writer of the letter; and you may rely upon it his orders shall be promptly obeyed.”

Savary, as he had said, instantly despatched orders for the arrest of the writer, whom he directed to be sent to France.  On his arrival he was interrogated respecting the letter.  He declared that he had written it at the instigation and under the dictation of Marshal Davoust, for doing which he received a small sum of money as a reward.  He also confessed that when the letter was put into the post the Prince of Eckmuhl ordered the Director of the Post to open it, take a copy, then seal it again, and send it to its address—­that is to say, to me—­and the copy to the Emperor.  The writer of the letter was banished to Marseilles, or to the Island of Hyeres, but the individual who dictated it continued a Marshal, a Prince, and a Governor-General, and still looked forward to the Viceroyalty of Poland!  Such was the discriminating justice of the Empire; and Davoust continued his endeavours to revenge himself by other calumnies for my not having considered him a man of talent.  I must do the Duc de Rovigo the justice to say that, though his fidelity to Napoleon was as it always had been, boundless, yet whilst he executed the Emperor’s orders he endeavoured to make him acquainted with the truth, as was proved by his conduct in the case I have just mentioned.  He was much distressed by the sort of terror which his appointment had excited in the public, and he acknowledged to me that he intended to restore confidence by a more mild system than that of his predecessor.  I had observed formerly that Savary did not coincide in the opinion I had always entertained of Fouche, but when once the Due de Rovigo endeavoured to penetrate the labyrinth of police, counter-police, inspections and hierarchies of espionage, he found they were all bugbears which Fouche had created to alarm the Emperor, as gardeners put up scarecrows among the fruit-trees to frighten away the sparrows.  Thus, thanks to the artifices of Fouche, the eagle was frightened as easily as the sparrows, until the period when the Emperor, convinced that Fouche was maintaining a correspondence with England through the agency of Ouvrard, dismissed him.