I know for a fact that Louis XVIII. wished to have nothing to do with Fouche, and indignantly refused to appoint him when he was first proposed. But he had so nobly served Bonaparte during the Hundred Days that it was necessary he should be rewarded. Fouche, besides, had gained the support of a powerful party among the emigrants of the Faubourg St.
Germain, and he possessed the art of rendering himself indispensable.
I have heard many honest men say very seriously that to him was due the tranquillity of Paris. Moreover, Wellington was the person by whose influence in particular Fouche was made one of the counsellors of the King. After all the benefits which foreigners had conferred upon us Fouche was indeed an acceptable present to France and to the King.
I was not ignorant of the Duke of Wellington's influence upon the affairs of the second Restoration, but for a long time I refused to believe that his influence should have outweighed all the serious considerations opposed to such a perfect anomaly as appointing Fouche the Minister of a Bourbon. But I was deceived. France and the King owed to him Fouche's introduction into the Council, and I had to thank him for the impossibility of resuming a situation which I had relinquished for the purpose of following the King into Belgium. Could I be Prefect of Police under a Minister whom a short time before I had received orders to arrest, but who eluded my agents? That was impossible. The King could not offer me the place of Prefect under Fouche, and if he had I could not have accepted it. I was therefore right in not relying on the assurances which had been given me; but I confess that if I had been told to guess the cause why they could not be realised I never should have thought that cause would have been the appointment of Fouche as a Minister of the King of France. At first, therefore, I was of course quite forgotten, as is the custom of courts when a faithful subject refrains from taking part in the intrigues of the moment.
I have already frequently stated my opinion of the pretended talent of Fouche; but admitting his talent to have been as great as was supposed, that would have been an additional reason for not entrusting the general police of the kingdom to him. His principles and conduct were already sufficiently known. No one could be ignorant of the language he held respecting the Bourbons, and in which be indulged as freely after he became the Minister of Louis XVIII. as when he was the Minister of Bonaparte. It was universally known that in his conversation the Bourbons were the perpetual butt for his sarcasms, that he never mentioned them but in terms of disparagement, and that he represented them as unworthy of governing France. Everybody must have been aware that Fouche, in his heart, favoured a Republic, where the part of President might have been assigned to him. Could any one have forgotten the famous postscript he subjoined to a letter he wrote from Lyons to his worthy friend Robespierre: "To celebrate the fete of the Republic suitably, I have ordered 250 persons to be shot?" And to this man, the most furious enemy of the restoration of the monarchy, was consigned the task of consolidating it for the second time! But it would require another Claudian to describe this new Rufinus!
Fouche never regarded a benefit in any other light than as the means of injuring his benefactor. The King, deceived, like many other persons, by the reputation which Fouche's partisans had conjured up for him, was certainly not aware that Fouche had always discharged the functions of Minister in his own interest, and never for the interest of the Government which had the weakness to entrust him with a power always dangerous in his hands. Fouche had opinions, but he belonged to no party, and his political success is explained by the readiness with which he always served the party he knew must triumph, and which he himself overthrew in its turn. He maintained himself in favour from the days of blood and terror until the happy time of the second Restoration only by abandoning and sacrificing those who were attached to him; and it might be said that his ruling passion was the desire of continual change. No man was ever characterised by greater levity or inconstancy of mind. In all things he looked only to himself, and to this egotism he sacrificed both subjects and Governments. Such were the secret causes of the sway exercised by Fouche during the Convention, the Directory, the Empire, the Usurpation, and after the second return of the Bourbons. He helped to found and to destroy every one of those successive Governments. Fouche's character is perfectly unique. I know no other man who, loaded with honours, and almost escaping disgrace, has passed through so many eventful periods, and taken part in so many convulsions and revolutions.
On the 7th of July the King was told that Fouche alone could smooth the way for his entrance into Paris, that he alone could unlock the gates of the capital, and that he alone had power to control public opinion. The reception given to the King on the following day afforded an opportunity of judging of the truth of these assertions. The King's presence was the signal for a feeling of concord, which was manifested in a very decided way. I saw upon the boulevards, and often in company with each other, persons, some of whom had resumed the white cockade, while others still retained the national colours, and harmony was not in the least disturbed by these different badges.
