Consul to attach less importance than at first he had to his secret
police, which seldom reported anything but false and silly stories.
That wretched police! During the time I was with him it embittered his
life, and often exasperated him against his wife, his relations, and
friends.

--[Bourrienne, it must be remembered, was a sufferer from the
vigilance of this police.]--

Rapp, who was as frank as he was brave, tells us in his Memoirs (p. 233)
that when Napoleon, during his retreat from Moscow, while before
Smolenski, heard of the attempt of Mallet, he could not get over the
adventure of the Police Minister, Savary, and the Prefect of Police,
Pasquier. "Napoleon," says Rapp, "was not surprised that these wretches
(he means the agents of the police) who crowd the salons and the taverns,
who insinuate themselves everywhere and obstruct everything, should not
have found out the plot, but he could not understand the weakness of the
Duc de Rovigo. The very police which professed to divine everything had
let themselves be taken by surprise." The police possessed no foresight
or faculty of prevention. Every silly thing that transpired was reported
either from malice or stupidity. What was heard was misunderstood or
distorted in the recital, so that the only result of the plan was
mischief and confusion.

The police as a political engine is a dangerous thing. It foments and
encourages more false conspiracies than it discovers or defeats real
ones. Napoleon has related "that M. de la Rochefoucauld formed at Paris
a conspiracy in favour of the King, then at Mittau, the first act of
which was to be the death of the Chief of the Government: The plot being
discovered, a trusty person belonging to the police was ordered to join