"'There is no republic now,' remarked Sieyes; 'Bonaparte is consul for ten years.'

"'He has more power than ever Cromwell had,' said the former bishop, 'and he did not vote for the death of the king.'

"'We have a master,' said Fouche; 'the question is, shall we continue to keep him if he loses the battle or shall we return to a pure republic?'

"'France,' replied Carnot, sententiously, 'cannot resist except she reverts to the old Conventional _energy_.'

"'I agree with Carnot,' said Sieyes; 'if Bonaparte returns defeated we must put an end to him; he has let us know him too well during the last seven months.'

"'The army is for him,' remarked Carnot, thoughtfully.

"'And the people for us!' cried Fouche.

"'You go fast, monsieur,' said the Prince, in that deep ba.s.s voice which he still preserves and which now drove Fouche back into himself.

"'Be frank,' said a voice, as a former Conventional rose from a corner of the boudoir and showed himself; 'if Bonaparte returns a victor, we shall adore him; if vanquished, we'll bury him!'

"'So you were there, Malin, were you?' said the Prince, without betraying the least feeling. 'Then you must be one of us; sit down'; and he made him a sign to be seated.

"It is to this one circ.u.mstance that Malin, a Conventional of small repute, owes the position he afterwards obtained and, ultimately, that in which we see him at the present moment. He proved discreet, and the ministers were faithful to him; but they made him the pivot of the machine and the cat's-paw of the machination. To return to my tale.

"'Bonaparte has never yet been vanquished,' cried Carnot, in a tone of conviction, 'and he has just surpa.s.sed Hannibal.'

"'If the worst happens, here is the Directory,' said Sieyes, artfully, indicating with a wave of his hand the five persons present.

"'And,' added the Prince, 'we are all committed to the maintenance of the French republic; we three priests have literally unfrocked ourselves; the general, here, voted for the death of the king; and you,' he said, turning to Malin, 'have got possession of the property of _emigres_.'

"'Yes, we have all the same interests,' said Sieyes, dictatorially, 'and our interests are one with those of the nation.'

"'A rare thing,' said the Prince, smiling.

"'We must act,' interrupted Fouche. 'In all probability the battle is now going on; the Austrians outnumber us; Genoa has surrendered; Ma.s.sena has committed the great mistake of embarking for Antibes; it is very doubtful if he can rejoin Bonaparte, who will then be reduced to his own resources.'

"'Who gave you that news?' asked Carnot.

"'It is sure,' replied Fouche. 'You will have the courier when the Bourse opens.'

"Those men didn't mince their words," said de Marsay, smiling, and stopping short for a moment.

"'Remember,' continued Fouche, 'it is not when the news of a disaster comes that we can organize clubs, rouse the patriotism of the people, and change the const.i.tution. Our 18th Brumaire ought to be prepared beforehand.'

"'Let us leave the care of that to the minister of police,' said the Prince, bowing to Fouche, 'and beware ourselves of Lucien.' (Lucien Bonaparte was then minister of the interior.)

"'I'll arrest him,' said Fouche.

"'Messieurs!' cried Sieyes, 'our Directory ought not to be subject to anarchical changes. We must organize a government of the few, a Senate for life, and an elective chamber the control of which shall be in our hands; for we ought to profit by the blunders of the past.'

"'With such a system, there would be peace for me,' remarked the ex-bishop.

"'Find me a sure man to negotiate with Moreau; for the Army of the Rhine will be our sole resource,' cried Carnot, who had been plunged in meditation.

"Ah!" said de Marsay, pausing, "those men were right. They were grand in this crisis. I should have done as they did"; then he resumed his narrative.

"'Messieurs!' cried Sieyes, in a grave and solemn tone.

"That word 'Messieurs!' was perfectly understood by all present; all eyes expressed the same faith, the same promise, that of absolute silence, and unswerving loyalty to each other in case the First Consul returned triumphant.

"'We all know what we have to do,' added Fouche.

"Sieyes softly unbolted the door; his priestly ear had warned him.

Lucien entered the room.

"'Good news!' he said. 'A courier has just brought Madame Bonaparte a line from the First Consul. The campaign has opened with a victory at Montebello.'

"The three ministers exchanged looks.

"'Was it a general engagement?' asked Carnot.

"'No, a fight, in which Lannes has covered himself with glory. The affair was b.l.o.o.d.y. Attacked with ten thousand men by eighteen thousand, he was only saved by a division sent to his support. Ott is in full retreat. The Austrian line is broken.'

"'When did the fight take place?' asked Carnot.

"'On the 8th,' replied Lucien.

"'And this is the 13th,' said the sagacious minister. 'Well, if that is so, the destinies of France are in the scale at the very moment we are speaking.'"

(In fact, the battle of Marengo did begin at dawn of the 14th.)

"'Four days of fatal uncertainty!' said Lucien.

"'Fatal?' said the minister of foreign affairs, coldly and interrogatively.

"'Four days,' echoed Fouche.

"An eye-witness told me," said de Marsay, continuing the narrative in his own person, "that the consuls, Cambaceres and Lebrun, knew nothing of this momentous news until after the six personages returned to the salon. It was then four in the morning. Fouche left first. That man of dark and mysterious genius, extraordinary, profound, and little understood, but who undoubtedly had the gifts of a Philip the Second, a Tiberius and a Borgia, went at once to work with an infernal and secret activity. His conduct at the time of the affair at Walcheren was that of a consummate soldier, a great politician, a far-seeing administrator. He was the only real minister that Napoleon ever had. And you all know how he then alarmed him.

"Fouche, Ma.s.sena and the Prince," continued de Marsay, reflectively, "are the three greatest men, the wisest heads in diplomacy, war, and government, that I have ever known. If Napoleon had frankly allied them with his work there would no longer be a Europe, only a vast French Empire. Fouche did not finally detach himself from Napoleon until he saw Sieyes and the Prince de Talleyrand shoved aside.

"He now went to work, and in three days (all the while hiding the hand that stirred the ashes of the Montagne) he had organized that general agitation which then arose all over France and revived the republicanism of 1793. As it is necessary that I should explain this obscure corner of our history, I must tell you that this agitation, starting from Fouche's own hand (which held the wires of the former Montagne), produced republican plots against the life of the First Consul, which was in peril from this cause long after the victory of Marengo. It was Fouche's sense of the evil he had thus brought about which led him to warn Napoleon, who held a contrary opinion, that republicans were more concerned than royalists in the various conspiracies.

"Fouche was an admirable judge of men; he relied on Sieyes because of his thwarted ambition, on Talleyrand because he was a great _seigneur_, on Carnot for his perfect honesty; but the man he dreaded was the one whom you have seen here this evening. I will now tell how he entangled that man in his meshes.

"Malin was only Malin in those days,--a secret agent and correspondent of Louis XVIII. Fouche now compelled him to reduce to writing all the proclamations of the proposed revolutionary government, its warrants and edicts against the factions of the 18th Brumaire. An accomplice against his own will, Malin was required to have these doc.u.ments secretly printed, and the copies held ready in his own house for distribution if Bonaparte were defeated. The printer was subsequently imprisoned and detained two months; he died in 1816, and always believed he had been employed by a Montagnard conspiracy.

"One of the most singular scenes ever played by Fouche's police was caused by the blunder of an agent, who despatched a courier to a famous banker of that day with the news of a defeat at Marengo. Victory, you will remember, did not declare itself for Napoleon until seven o'clock in the evening of the battle. At midday the banker's agent, considering the day lost and the French army about to be annihilated, hastened to despatch the courier. On receipt of that news Fouche was about to put into motion a whole army of bill-posters and cries, with a truck full of proclamations, when the second courier arrived with the news of the triumph which put all France beside itself with joy. There were heavy losses at the Bourse, of course. But the criers and posters who were gathered to announce the political death of Bonaparte and to post up the new proclamations were only kept waiting awhile till the news of the victory could be struck off!

"Malin, on whom the whole responsibility of the plot of which he had been the working agent was likely to fall if it ever became known, was so terrified that he packed the proclamations and other papers in carts and took them down to Gondreville in the night-time, where no doubt they were hidden in the cellars of that chateau, which he had bought in the name of another man--who was it, by the bye? he had him made chief-justice of an Imperial court--Ah! Marion. Having thus disposed of these d.a.m.ning proofs he returned to Paris to congratulate the First Consul on his victory. Napoleon, as you know, rushed from Italy to Paris after the battle of Marengo with alarming celerity. Those who know the secret history of that time are well aware that a message from Lucien brought him back. The minister of the interior had foreseen the att.i.tude of the Montagnard party, and though he had no idea of the quarter from which the wind really blew, he feared a storm. Incapable of suspecting the three ministers and Carnot, he attributed the movement which stirred all France to the hatred his brother had excited by the 18th Brumaire, and to the confident belief of the men of 1793 that defeat was certain in Italy.

"The battle of Marengo detained Napoleon on the plains of Lombardy until the 25th of June, but he reached Paris on the 2nd of July. Imagine the faces of the five conspirators as they met the First Consul at the Tuileries, and congratulated him on the victory. Fouche on that very occasion at the palace told Malin to have patience, for _all was not over yet_. The truth was, Talleyrand and Fouche both held that Bonaparte was not as much bound to the principles of the Revolution as they were, and as he ought to be; and for this reason, as well as for their own safety, they subsequently, in 1804, buckled him irrevocably, as they believed, to its cause by the affair of the Duc d'Enghien. The execution of that prince is connected by a series of discoverable ramifications with the plot which was laid on that June evening in the boudoir of the ministry of foreign affairs, the night before the battle of Marengo.