Page:Napoleon (O'Connor 1896).djvu/71

Rh personal obligations, if he had rather not fail in delicacy, or even in common loyalty, he incurs the risk of offending or losing the favour of the master, which is the case with M. de Rémusat, who is willing to become his spy, reporter, and denunciator for the Faubourg Saint-Germain, but does not offer at Vienna to drag from Madame d'André the address of her husband, so that M. d'André may be taken and immediately shot. Savary, who was the negotiator for his being given up, kept constantly telling M. de Rémusat, 'You are going against your interest; I may say that I do not comprehend you!

This Savary was one of the most contemptible and villainous of Napoleon's agents. Napoleon himself said of him: "He is a man who must be constantly corrupted."

"And yet Savary, himself Minister of the Police, executor of most important arrests, head manager of the murder of the Due d'Enghien, and of the ambuscade at Bayonne, counterfeiter of Austrian banknotes for the campaign of 1809, and of Russian banknotes for that of 1812, Savary ends in getting weary; he is charged with too many dirty jobs; however hardened his conscience, it has a tender spot; he discovers at last that he has scruples. It is with great repugnance that, in February 1814, he executes the order to have a small infernal machine prepared, moving by clockwork, so as to blow up the Bourbons on their return to France.