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Updated: June 5, 2025
However, I determined to meet with courage the difficulties that presented themselves, and I must say that I had every reason to be satisfied with the manner in which I was seconded by M. Foudras, the Inspector-General of the Police. Even now I am filled with astonishment when I think of the Council that was held at the Tuileries on the evening of the 13th of March in M. de Blacas' apartments.
I at first refused to give up the portfolio, but M. de Blacas told me the King had ordered him to receive it; I then, of course, yielded the point.
I watched the extravagance and inconsistency that were passing around me, and the new follies which were every day committed; and it must be confessed that a rich and varied picture presented itself to my observation. The King did not bring back M. de Blacas. His Majesty had yielded to prudent advice, and on arriving at Mons sent the unlucky Minister as his ambassador to Naples.
After all, however, M. de Blacas did not receive me, and I only had the honour of speaking to his secretary, who, if the fact deserve to be recorded, was an abbe named Fleuriel. This personage, who was an extraordinary specimen of impertinence and self-conceit, would have been an admirable study for a comic poet.
"Monseigneur, I do not possess the millions with which they credit me, but let M. de Blacas tell his master Louis XVIII. that if I did, I should not employ them to foment troubles in Corsica, or to gain adherents for my son in France, since he already has enough; I should use them to fit out a fleet to liberate him from St. Helena, where the most infamous perfidy is holding him captive."
In order to arouse Minister Blacas out of his stupid dream of security, to a realizing sense of the grave events that were taking place, Fouché told him that a conspiracy against the government was being formed in the parlors of the Duchess of St.
Such conduct was well worthy of the man who was the last to forsake Napoleon in, 1814, and the first to rejoin him, and that without the desire of accepting any appointment in 1815. M. de Blacas, who was himself much surprised at Macdonald's letter, communicated it to the King of Naples, whose answer deserves to be recorded.
On the 15th of March, after the conversation which, as I have already related, I had with Louis XVIII, I went to M. de Blacas and repeated to him what I had stated to the King on the certainty of Bonaparte's speedy arrival in Paris.
"Or of wisdom, my dear baron or of wisdom," said Louis XVIII., laughing; "the greatest captains of antiquity amused themselves by casting pebbles into the ocean see Plutarch's life of Scipio Africanus." M. de Blacas pondered deeply between the confident monarch and the truthful minister.
It was not a little extraordinary to see the direction of the Government consigned to a man who neither had nor could have any knowledge of France. From the commencement M. de Blacas affected ministerial omnipotence.
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