on, Fouche, owed his importance and ephemeral success.

When honest men fail to understand or execute the designs of Providence,
dishonesty undertakes the task. Under the pressure of circumstances, and
in the midst of general weakness, corrupt, sagacious, and daring spirits
are ever at hand, who perceive at once what may happen, or what may be
attempted, and make themselves the instruments of a triumph to which
they have no natural claim, but of which they assume the credit, to
appropriate the fruits. Such a man was the Duke of Otranto during the
Hundred Days,--a revolutionist transformed into a grandee; and desirous
of being consecrated in this double character by the ancient royalty of
France, he employed, to accomplish his end, all the cleverness and
audacity of a reckless intriguer more clear-sighted and sensible than
his associates. Perhaps also--for justice ought to retain its scruples
even towards those who have none themselves--perhaps a desire to save
his country from violence and useless suffering may have had some share
in the series of treasons and imperturbable changes of side, by means of
which, while deceiving and playing alternately with Napoleon, La
Fayette, and Carnot, the Empire, the Republic, and the regicidal
Convention, Fouche gained the time that he required to open for himself
the doors of the King's cabinet, while he opened the gates of Paris to
the King.

Louis XVIII. offered some resistance, but, notwithstanding what he had
said to me at Ghent respecting Cambaceres, I doubt whether he objected
strongly. He was one of those who are dignified from habit and decorum
rather than from a real and powerful emotion of the soul; and propriety
disappeared before emergency. He had, as vouchers for the necessities of
the case, two authorities who were the best calculated to influence his
decision and uphold his honour; the Duke of Wellington and the Count
d'Artois both urged him to accept Fouche as a minister:--Wellington, to
secure an easy return for the King, and also that he himself, and
England with him, might remain the principal author of the Restoration
by promptly terminating the war before Paris, where he feared to be
compromised through the violent hatred of the Prussians; the Count
d'Artois, with impatient levity, always ready to promise and agree, and
already entangled through his most active confidant, M. de Vitrolles, in
the snare which Fouche had spread for the Royalists on every side.

I