sacres. The window-smashers, who, in 1817, were the preluders to the carnage of the Rue Saint Denis, were not, I believe, belonging to the 'Brigade de Sureté.' I appeal to M. Delavau; I appeal to the director Franchet:—the freed convicts are not the worst inhabitants of Paris; and in more cases than one, have evinced that they will not stoop to all that is required of them. My post, as far as concerns political police, was limited to the execution of some warrants of the attorney-general and the ministers; but these warrants would have been enforced without me; and, besides, they had decided legal authority. And besides, no human power, no prospect of reward, could have induced me to act conformably to principles and sentiments not my own: and my veracity will not be impugned, when I state the motives that induced me voluntarily to resign the post I had filled for fifteen years;—when I explain the source and the reason of the ridiculous tale, according to which I was to have been hanged at Vienna, for an attempt to assassinate the son of Napoleon;—when I shall have told to what Jesuitical plot is to be assigned the false story of the apprehension of a thief, who was stated to have been lately seized at the back of my carriage, at the moment I was passing Place Baudoyer.
In drawing up these Memoirs, I at first limited myself to arrangements and restrictions prescribed by my personal situation, which were prudential. Although pardoned since 1818, I was not out of the reach of administrative rigour: the letter of pardon which I have obtained, instead of a revision which would have freed me, was not drawn out; and it might be that the "powers that be," still bearing the license of absolute control over me, might make me repent these disclosures, which do not however exceed the bounds of our constitutional liberty. Now that at the solemn audience of the first of last July, (1828,) the court of Douai proclaimed that the rights which had been taken from me by an error of justice, were at length
