nder that of the Abbe Carlos.

Born at Canquoelles, the only possession of his family, which was highly
respectable, this Southerner's name was Peyrade. He belonged, in fact,
to the younger branch of the Peyrade family, an old but impoverished
house of Franche Comte, still owning the little estate of la Peyrade.
The seventh child of his father, he had come on foot to Paris in 1772
at the age of seventeen, with two crowns of six francs in his pocket,
prompted by the vices of an ardent spirit and the coarse desire to "get
on," which brings so many men to Paris from the south as soon as they
understand that their father's property can never supply them with means
to gratify their passions. It is enough to say of Peyrade's youth that
in 1782 he was in the confidence of chiefs of the police and the hero
of the department, highly esteemed by MM. Lenoir and d'Albert, the last
Lieutenant-Generals of Police.

The Revolution had no police; it needed none. Espionage, though common
enough, was called public spirit.

The Directorate, a rather more regular government than that of the
Committee of Public Safety, was obliged to reorganize the Police, and
the first Consul completed the work by instituting a Prefect of Police
and a department of police supervision.

Peyrade, a man knowing the traditions, collected the force with the
assistance of a man named Corentin, a far cleverer man than Peyrade,
though younger; but he was a genius only in the subterranean ways of
police inquiries. In 1808 the great services Peyrade was able to
achieve were rewarded by an appointment to the eminent position of
Chief Commissioner of Police at Antwerp. In Napoleon's mind this sort of
Police Governorship was equivalent to a Minister's post, with the duty
of superintending Holland. At the end of the campaign of 1809, Peyrade
was removed from Antwerp by an order in Council from the Emperor,
carried in a chaise to Paris between two gendarmes, and imprisoned in la
Force. Two months later he was let out on bail furnished by his friend
Corentin, after having been subjected to three examinations, each
lasting six hours, in the office of the head of the Police.

Did Peyrade owe his overthrow to the miraculous energy he displayed in
aiding Fouche in the defence of the French coast when threatened by
what was known at the time as the Walcheren expedition, when the Duke of
Otranto manifested such abilities as alarmed the Emperor? Fouche thought
it probable ev