--[At this period a caricature (by Gillray) appeared in London.
which was sent to Paris, and strictly sought after by the police.
One of the copies was shown to the First Consul, who was highly
indignant at it. The French fleet was represented by a number of
nut-shells. An English sailor, seated on a rock, was quietly
smoking his pipe, the whiffs of which were throwing the whole
squadron into disorder.--Bourrienne. Gillray's caricatures should
be at the reader's side during the perusal of this work, also
English Caricature and Satire on Napoleon I., by J. Ashton Chatto:
and Windus, 1884.]--

After visiting Belgium, and giving directions there, the First Consul
returned from Brussels to Paris by way of Maestricht, Liege, and
Soissons.

Before my visit to the Tuileries, and even before the rupture of the
peace of Amiens, certain intriguing speculators, whose extravagant zeal
was not less fatal to the cause of the Bourbons than was the blind
subserviency of his unprincipled adherents to the First Consul, had taken
part in some underhand manoeuvres which could have no favourable result.
Amongst these great contrivers of petty machinations the well-known
Fauche Borel, the bookseller of Neufchatel, had long been conspicuous.
Fauche Borel, whose object was to create a stir, and who wished nothing
better than to be noticed and paid, failed not to come to France as soon
as the peace of Amiens afforded him the opportunity. I was at that time
still with Bonaparte, who was aware of all these little plots, but who
felt no personal anxiety on the subject, leaving to his police the care
of watching their authors.

The object of Fauche Borel's mission was to bring about a reconciliation