The frequency of conspiracies not only shows the discontent of the
governed, but the insecurity and instability of the governors. This
truth has not escaped Napoleon, who has, therefore, ordered an
expeditious and secret justice to despatch instantly the conspirators,
and to bury the conspiracy in oblivion, except when any grand coup d'etat
is to be struck; or, to excite the passions of hatred, any proofs can be
found, or must be fabricated, involving an inimical or rival foreign
Government in an odious plot. Since the farce which Mehee de la Touche
exhibited, you have, therefore, not read in the Moniteur either of the
danger our Emperor has incurred several times since from the machinations
of implacable or fanatical foes, or of the alarm these have caused his
partisans. They have, indeed, been hinted at in some speeches of our
public functionaries, and in some paragraphs of our public prints, but
their particulars will remain concealed from historians, unless some one
of those composing our Court, our fashionable, or our political circles,
has taken the trouble of noting them down; but even to these they are but
imperfectly or incorrectly known.

Could the veracity of a Fouche, a Real, a Talleyrand, or a Duroc (the
only members of this new secret and invisible tribunal for expediting
conspirators) be depended upon, they would be the most authentic
annalists of these and other interesting secret occurrences.

What I intend relating to you on this subject are circumstances such as
they have been reported in our best informed societies by our most
inquisitive companions. Truth is certainly the foundation of these
anecdotes; but their parts may be extenuated, diminished, altered, or
exaggerated. Defective or incomplete as they are, I hope you will not
judge them unworthy of a page in a letter, considering the grand