he even proposed to send him a challenge to a duel in
the Bois de Boulogne.[283] The challenge, of course, was not sent; a
show of reconciliation was assumed between the two warriors; but
Napoleon retained a covert dislike of the man whose brusque
republicanism was applauded by a large portion of the army and by the
_frondeurs_ of Paris.

The ruin of Moreau, and the confusion alike of French royalists and
of the British Ministry, could now be assured by the encouragement of
a Jacobin-Royalist conspiracy, in which English officials should be
implicated. Moreau was notoriously incapable in the sphere of
political intrigue: the royalist coteries in London presented just the
material on which the _agent provocateur_ delights to work; and some
British officials could, doubtless, with equal ease be drawn into the
toils. Mehee de la Touche has left a highly spiced account of his
adventures; but it must, of course, be received with distrust.[284]

Proceeding first to Guernsey, he gained the confidence of the
Governor, General Doyle; and, fortified by recommendations from him,
he presented himself to the _emigres_ at London, and had an interview
with Lord Hawkesbury and the Under-Secretaries of State, Messrs.
Hammond and Yorke. He found it easy to inflame the imagination of the
French exiles, who clutched at the proposed union between the
irreconcilables, the extreme royalists, and the extreme republicans;
and it was forthwith arranged that Napoleon's power, which rested on
the support of the peasants, in fact of the body of France, should be
crushed by an enveloping move of the tips of the wings.

Mehee's narrative contains few details and dates, such as enable one
to test his assertions. But I have examined the Puisaye Papers,[285]
and also the Foreign and Home Office archives, and have found proofs
of the complicity of our Government, which it will be well to present
here connectedly. Taken singly they are inconclusive, but collectively
their importance is considerable. In our Foreign Office Records
(France, No 70) there is a letter, dated London, August 30th, 1803,
from the Baron de Roll, the factotum of the exiled Bourbons, to Mr.
Hammond, our Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, asking
him to call on the Comte d'Artois at his residence, No. 46, Baker
Street. That the deliberations at that house were not wholly peaceful
appears from a long secret memorandum of October 24th, 1803, in which
the Comte d'Artois