Fouche on that very occasion at the palace told Malin to have patience, for _all was not over yet_.

The truth was, Talleyrand and Fouche both held that Bonaparte was not as much bound to the principles of the Revolution as they were, and as he ought to be; and for this reason, as well as for their own safety, they subsequently, in 1804, buckled him irrevocably, as they believed, to its cause by the affair of the Duc d'Enghien.

The execution of that prince is connected by a series of discoverable ramifications with the plot which was laid on that June evening in the boudoir of the ministry of foreign affairs, the night before the battle of Marengo.
Those who have the means of judging, and who have known persons who were well-informed, are fully aware that Bonaparte was handled like a child by Talleyrand and Fouche, who were determined to alienate him irrevocably from the House of Bourbon, whose agents were even then, at the last moment, endeavoring to negotiate with the First Consul." "Talleyrand was playing whist in the salon of Madame de Luynes," said a personage who had been listening attentively to de Marsay's narrative.
"It was about three o'clock in the morning, when he pulled out his watch, looked at it, stopped the game, and asked his three companions abruptly and without any preface whether the Prince de Conde had any other children than the Duc d'Enghien.

Such an absurd inquiry from the lips of Talleyrand caused the utmost surprise.

'Why do you ask us what you know perfectly well yourself ?' they said to him.