Note 153 — Chapter LXXXIX
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This was Fouché, who seems to have been engaged in secret correspondence with all and sundry of the belligerent powers, while he was minister of police under Napoleon. In his Memoirs [vol. ii., p. 279] he is made to boast that he contrived to keep his word to the Duke of Wellington, by sending the plan of Buonaparte's campaign by a female, a Flemish postmistress, whom he laid wait for on the frontier, and caused to be arrested. Thus he
"kept the word of promise to the ear, And broke it to the sense."
This story, we have some reason to believe, is true. One of the marvels of our times is how Fouché, after having been the mainspring of such a complication of plots and counterplots, revolutionary and counter-revolutionary intrigues, contrived after all to die in his bed!—S.—On the second restoration, Louis XVIII. saw himself reduced to the sad necessity of admitting Fouché to his counsels. But the clamours raised against his profligacy and treachery convincing him that it would be dangerous to continue in France, he resigned in September, and was sent ambassador to Dresden. In January, 1816, he was denounced as a regicide by both Chambers, and condemned to death, in case he re-entered the French territory. He died at Trieste, December 26, 1820, in his sixty-seventh year, leaving behind him an immense fortune.