The general fright was of use to the anger and emotion of the First Consul. The enemies of Fouché denounced a police everywhere favorable to the old Jacobins. The suspicions of Bonaparte were all directed against these known and furious enemies of his person and his policy. He was enraged in his irritation, and disdained, according to his custom, the legal forms and the justice of the tribunals. "We must make the number of the convicted equal to the number of their victims," he said, "and transport all their adherents. I will not have all quarters of Paris successively undermined. There are always Septembrisers, miscreants covered with crimes, in square battalion against every successive government. It is necessary to make an end of them." Fouché, silent but imperturbable, for a long time on the traces of the conspiracy, persisted in seeing in the infernal machine the work of the agents of Chouannerie. The Council of State proposed to institute a military commission and authorize the First Consul to remove the men who appeared dangerous. Bonaparte was irritated by this slowness of justice. "The action of a special tribunal will be slow," said he; "it will not get hold of the truly guilty. It is not a question of judicial metaphysics. There are in France 10,000 miscreants who have persecuted all honest men, and who are steeped in blood. They are not all culpable in the same degree, far from it. Strike the chiefs boldly and the soldiers will disperse. There is no middle course here; it is necessary to pardon all, like Augustus, or else there must be a prompt and terrible vengeance proportionate to the crime. It is necessary to shoot fifteen or twenty of these miscreants, and transport 200 of them. I am so convinced of the necessity of purging France from these sanguinary dregs that I am ready to constitute myself sole tribunal--to bring forward the guilty, examine them, judge them, and have their condemnation carried into effect. It is not myself that I seek to avenge here. I am as ready to die as First Consul for the preservation of the Republic and the Constitution as to fall upon the field of battle; but it is necessary to reassure France, who will approve my policy."