An event had occurred in December in connection with which Talleyrand is often severely censured. An attempt had been made by certain _chouans_ to blow up the First Consul as he went to the opera. Napoleon at once called a Council of State, and declared it was the work of the Jacobins. Whatever the suspicions of the Councillors were, they knew that Napoleon was bent on making this a pretext for a severe blow at the Terrorists, and they said nothing when a number of the more truculent were executed and deported for a crime that was afterwards found to be the work of Royalists. There was much indignation against Fouché for the negligence of the police. Mr. Holland Rose says that “if we may credit the _on dit_ of Pasquier, Talleyrand urged the execution of Fouché.” We may _not_ credit the _on dits_ of Pasquier when they reflect on Talleyrand; and such a suggestion is entirely inconsistent with Talleyrand’s character. It seems to be stated with more authority (though the reports are not consistent) that Talleyrand—probably at the instigation of Napoleon—advocated taking action on a _senatus-consultum_, which would dispense with the need of passing measures through the less complaisant bodies. Talleyrand said at the time that it was necessary to give foreign governments one of those guarantees of stability about which they were so anxious. There were few tears shed over the brutal and hasty treatment of the remnant of the Terrorists. In those early years Talleyrand felt a lively personal attachment to Napoleon. “The sentiment that attaches me to you,” he writes, “my conviction that the devotion of my life to your destiny and to the grand views that inspire you is not without effect in their realisation, have made me take more care of my health than I have ever done before.” Later, when Napoleon had rendered some service to his family: “I am with you in life or death.” His letters up to 1804 frequently exhale an odour that the British perception would class as that of rank flattery. Making due allowance for the exaggerated manners of the day, the sentiment seems to be sincere. The allusions of Napoleonists in later years to “an Auteuil conspiracy” (where Talleyrand had a house) early in the nineteenth century are frivolous. Talleyrand would, no doubt, shudder at the coarseness of Napoleon’s language at times and cannot have been blind to his ambition. But the latter coincided as yet with the interest of France, and the former was almost obliterated in the glare of his genius. When we consider the vast work that Napoleon was doing for France, and the very probable effect a restoration of the King at that period would have had, we feel that Talleyrand must have clung to him with real anxiety.