Those horrible trimmings did not impose upon me: because M. "de Nantes" had diluted republican crimes with imperial mire; because the _sans-culotte_, transformed into a duke, had wrapped the cord of the lantern in the ribbon of the Legion of Honour, he appeared neither the abler nor the greater for it in my eyes. The Jacobins detest men who make no account of their atrocities and who despise their murders; their pride is provoked, like that of authors whose talent one disputes. * [Sidenote: His underhand negotiations.] At the same time that Fouché was sending M. Gaillard to Ghent to negociate with the brother of Louis XVI., his agents at Bâle were parleying with those of Prince Metternich[300] on the subject of Napoleon II., and M. de Saint-Léon, dispatched by this same Fouché, was arriving in Vienna to treat of the crown as a "possibility" for M. le Duc d'Orléans. The friends of the Duc d'Otrante could rely upon him no more than his enemies: on the return of the legitimate Princes, he maintained his old colleague, M. Thibaudeau[301], on the list of exiles, while M. de Talleyrand struck this or that outlaw off the list, or added that other to the catalogue, according to his whim. Had not the Faubourg Saint-Germain reason indeed to believe in M. Fouché? M. de Saint-Léon carried three notes to Vienna, of which one was addressed to M. de Talleyrand: the Duc d'Otrante proposed that the ambassador of Louis XVIII. should push the son of Égalité on to the throne, if he saw his way! What probity in those negociations! How fortunate they were to have to do with such honest persons! Yet we have admired, censed, blessed those highway robbers; we have paid court to them; we have called them _monseigneur!_ That explains the world as it stands. M. de Montrond came in addition, after M. de Saint-Léon. M. le Duc d'Orléans did not conspire in fact but by consent; he let the revolutionary affinities intrigue: a sweet society! In this dark lane, the plenipotentiary of the King of France lent an ear to Fouché's overtures. Speaking of M. de Talleyrand's detention at the Barrière d'Enfer, I said what had, till then, been M. de Talleyrand's fixed idea as to the regency of Marie-Louise: he was obliged by the emergency to embrace the eventuality of the Bourbons; but he was always ill at ease: it seemed to him that, under the heirs of St. Louis, a married bishop would never be sure of his place. The idea of substituting the Younger Branch for the Elder Branch pleased him, therefore, so much so the more in that he had had former relations with the Palais Royal.