Talleyrand, who rightly believed that these changes were for the real good of France, would not be insensible to the humour of the situation or the diplomatic genius of the new head of the State. It had been decreed that ministers should discuss their portfolios every day before the three Consuls, but Talleyrand had pointed out to Napoleon on the day of his installation at the Foreign Office (Nov. 21st, 1799) that its affairs were of a peculiarly private nature, and had proposed that he should confer with the First Consul alone. Napoleon was more than willing, and the long, close, and most fruitful co-operation of the two began. Napoleonist writers are apt to imagine that Talleyrand was little more than a clerk, as most of the other ministers were, but we shall see as we proceed that Napoleon often left even the initiative to him. Thiers observes that Fouché and Talleyrand were the only ministers who were not effaced by the phenomenal activity of Napoleon. His vast intelligence was already at work on plans for beautifying Paris, improving the roads of the country, restoring financial soundness, creating a system of education, reviving industry, formulating a code of laws, and effecting a hundred other improvements. A royalist visitor who saw Napoleon at the time said that he looked like a well-dressed lackey—until you met his eye. That eye was now searching Paris through and through for means of consolidating his position; it was sweeping over the broad provinces of France in search of disorders to remedy and dangers to crush: it was following royalists and Jacobins into exile, scanning the countenances of kings and statesmen abroad, counting their ships and forces, turning from East Indies to West Indies, from St. Petersburg to Cairo and Persia. In Fouché he had a political detective, unhampered by the faintest sense of moral principle, who could answer for Paris. Gradually relaxing the laws against the emigrants, he threw open the career to all talent, excepting only the militant royalists and the most violent Jacobins. Priests were now only required to promise, not to swear allegiance; large numbers of emigrants were struck off the list on one pretext or other, though the peasants were at the same time assured that not a franc’s worth of emigrant or ecclesiastical property would be restored; and all were promptly put under the searchlight of the Ministry of Police. Even Jacobins were in time absorbed. Talleyrand saw one leave Napoleon’s room one day, and expressed surprise at it. “You don’t know the Jacobins,” said Napoleon. “There are the salty Jacobins and the sugary Jacobins. That one is a salty Jacobin. I do what I like with those. They have to be arrested sometimes, but a little money soon manages that. But the sugary Jacobins! They would destroy twenty governments with their metaphysics.” [Illustration: _From an engraving, after the picture by Delaroche._ NAPOLEON.]