M. de Blacas had left in his boxes a great number of papers. The Emperor directed the Duke of Otranto to examine them. Of this he immediately repented, and sent for them again. Part fell to our share: the rest were delivered to the Duke of Vicenza. Their examination afforded nothing interesting. The Emperor, disappointed, accused M. Fouche of having removed the important papers. Those we inspected consisted only of private reports, and confidential and anonymous notes. The hatred of the revolution pervaded every line, every word. The writers did not dare to propose plainly the revocation of the Charter, and the abolition of the new institutions; but they declared without any circumlocution, that the dynasty of the Bourbons would never be secure with the existing laws; and that it was necessary, to distrust and get rid of the men of the revolution. More effectually to know and persecute these, M. de Blacas had caused to be disinterred from the archives of the cabinet, and of the ministers, the documents that might serve to make known their conduct ever since 1789, and he had directed biographical notices of each to be composed, which might easily have been taken for indictments drawn up by M. Bellart[106]. [Footnote 106: Attorney-general to the king, employed on certain occasions, to prosecute political crimes and misdemeanors.] We found also a number of minutes of laws and ordinances, written by the hand of this minister, and attesting by their laborious corrections, how destitute he was of readiness and of imagination. Frequently he made three or four foul copies, before he could give any consistency or connection to his ideas. His familiar style was dry and turgid: if the style exhibit the man, how I pity M. de Blacas! He took extreme pains to vary, himself, the form of his appointments (_rendez-vous_): and the trouble he gave himself, to say the same thing in several different ways, wonderfully reminded us of the billet-doux of the Bourgeois Gentilhomme: "_Belle Marquise, vos beaux yeux me font mourir d'amour; d'amour mourir me font, belle Marquise, vos beaux yeux[107]._" [Footnote 107: "Beautiful Marchioness, your beautiful eyes make me die of love; of love make me die, beautiful Marchioness, your beautiful eyes."] In fine, we collected from the cabinet of this minister an ample collection of royal denunciations, petitions, justifications, and confessions, of those men, who, like Lockard, are always "the most humble servants of circumstances."