THE CABINET OF A CHEF-DE-POLICE. Whatever opinion may be formed of the character of the celebrated conspiracy of Georges and Pichegru, the mode of its discovery, and the secret rules by which its plans were detected, are among the great triumphs of police skill. From the hour when the conspirators first met together in London, to that last fatal moment when they expired in the Temple, the agents of Fouché never ceased to track them. Their individual tastes and ambitions were studied; their habits carefully investigated; every thing that could give a clew to their turn of thought or mind well weighed; so that the Consular Government was not only in possession of all their names and rank, but knew thoroughly the exact amount of complicity attaching to each, and could distinguish between the reckless violence of Georges and the more tempered, but higher ambition of Moreau. It was a long while doubtful whether the great general would be implicated in the scheme. His habitual reserve--a habit less of caution than of constitutional delicacy--had led him to few intimacies, and nothing like even one close friendship; he moved little in society; he corresponded with none, save on the duties of the service. Fouché's well-known boast of, "Give me two words of a man's writing and I'll hang him," were then scarcely applicable here. To attack such a man unsuccessfully, to arraign him on a weak indictment, would have been ruin; and yet Bonaparte's jealousy of his great rival pushed him even to this peril, rather than risk the growing popularity of his name with the army. Fouché, and, it is said also, Talleyrand, did all they could to dissuade the First Consul from this attempt, but he was fixed and immutable in his resolve, and the Police Minister at once addressed himself to his task with all his accustomed cleverness. High play was one of the great vices of the day. It was a time of wild and varied excitement, and men sought, even in their dissipations, the whirlwind passions that stirred them in active life. Moreau, however, was no gambler; it was said that he never could succeed in learning a game. He, whose mind could comprehend the most complicated question of strategy, was obliged to confess himself conquered by écarte! So much for the vaunted intellectuality of the play-table! Neither was he addicted to wine. All his habits were temperate, even to the extent of unsociality.