penetrate the labyrinth of police, counter-police, inspections and
hierarchies of espionage, he found they were all bugbears which Fouche
had created to alarm the Emperor, as gardeners put up scarecrows among
the fruit-trees to frighten away the sparrows. Thus, thanks to the
artifices of Fouche, the eagle was frightened as easily as the sparrows,
until the period when the Emperor, convinced that Fouche was maintaining
a correspondence with England through the agency of Ouvrard, dismissed
him.

I saw with pleasure that Savary, the Minister of Police, wished to
simplify the working of his administration, and to gradually diminish
whatever was annoying in it, but, whatever might be his intentions, he
was not always free to act. I acknowledge that when I read his Memoirs I
saw with great impatience that in many matters he had voluntarily assumed
responsibilities for acts which a word from him might have attributed to
their real author. However this may be, what much pleased me in Savary
was the wish he showed to learn the real truth in order to tell it to
Napoleon. He received from the Emperor more than one severe rebuff.
This came from the fact that since the immense aggrandisement of the
Empire the ostensible Ministers, instead of rising in credit, had seen
their functions diminish by degrees. Thus proposals for appointments to
the higher grades of the army came from the cabinet of Berthier, and not
from that of the Minister-of-War. Everything which concerned any part of
the government of the Interior or of the Exterior, except for the
administration of War and perhaps for that of Finance, had its centre in
the cabinet of M. Maret, certainly an honest man, but whose facility in
saying "All is right," so much helped to make all wrong.

The home trade, manufactures, and particularly several of the Parisian
firms were in a state of distress the more hurtful as it contrasted so