en then; and now, when everybody knows what went on in the
Cabinet Council called together by Cambaceres, it is absolutely certain.
The Ministers, thunderstruck by the news of England's attempt, a
retaliation on Napoleon for the Boulogne expedition, and taken by
surprise when the Master was entrenched in the island of Lobau, where
all Europe believed him to be lost, had not an idea which way to turn.
The general opinion was in favor of sending post haste to the Emperor;
Fouche alone was bold enough to sketch a plan of campaign, which, in
fact, he carried into execution.

"Do as you please," said Cambaceres; "but I, who prefer to keep my head
on my shoulders, shall send a report to the Emperor."

It is well known that the Emperor on his return found an absurd pretext,
at a full meeting of the Council of State, for discarding his Minister
and punishing him for having saved France without the Sovereign's help.
From that time forth, Napoleon had doubled the hostility of Prince
de Talleyrand and the Duke of Otranto, the only two great politicians
formed by the Revolution, who might perhaps have been able to save
Napoleon in 1813.

To get rid of Peyrade, he was simply accused of connivance in favoring
smuggling and sharing certain profits with the great merchants. Such an
indignity was hard on a man who had earned the Marshal's baton of the
Police Department by the great services he had done. This man, who had
grown old in active business, knew all the secrets of every Government
since 1775, when he had entered the service. The Emperor, who believed
himself powerful enough to create men for his own uses, paid no heed to
the representations subsequently laid before him in favor of a man who
was reckoned as one of the most trustworthy, most capable, and most
acute of the unknown genii whose task it is to watch over the safety
of a State. He thought he could put Contenson in Peyrade's place; but
Contenson was at that time employed by Corentin for his own benefit.

Peyrade felt the blow all the more keenly because, being greedy and a
libertine, he had found himself, with regard to women, in the position
of a pastry-cook who loves sweetmeats. His habits of vice had become to
him a second nature; he could not live without a good dinner, without
gambling, in short, without the life of an unpretentious fine gentleman,
in which men of powerful faculties so generally indulge when they have
allowed excessive dissipation to become a n