"Now that the enemy is in France", he added, "it is necessary that I should be invested with extraordinary power, that of a temporary dictatorship. As a measure of safety for the country, I might assume this power; but it would be better and more national that it should be conferred upon me by the Chambers". The ministers were too well acquainted with the general views and disposition of the Chamber of Representatives to pronounce a direct approval of this step; but Napoleon, perceiving their hesitation, called upon them to express their opinion upon the measures of public safety required by existing circumstances. Lazare, Count of Carnot, the Minister of the Interior, conceived it to lie essential that the country should be declared in danger; that the "Fédérés" and National Guards should be called to arms; that Paris should be placed in a stage of siege, and measures adopted for its defence; that at the lost extremity the armed force should retire behind the Loire, and take up an entrenched position; that the Army of La Vendee, where the Civil War had nearly terminated, as also the Corps of Observation in the south, should be recalled: and the enemy checked until sufficient force could be united and organised for the assumption of a vigorous offensive, by which he should be driven out of France. Decrès, the Minister of the Navy, and Regnaud de Saint Jean d'Angely, the Secretary of State, supported this opinion; but Fouché, the Minister of Police, and the remaining ministers, remarked that the safety of the state did not depend upon any particular measure which might thus be proposed, but upon the Chambers of the Estates (Parliament); and upon their uniting with the head of the government: and that by manifesting towards them confidence and good faith, they would be induced to declare it to be their duty to unite with Napoleon in the adoption of energetic measures for securing the honour and independence of the nation. This advice on the part of Fouché was an artful piece of dissimulation. No man in France possessed so intimate a knowledge of the secret workings of the public mind; he knew precisely the dispositions and views of the different factions, as also the character and temperament of their leaders. He knew also that the great parties in the Chambers, with the exception of the imperialists, who were in the minority but whom he secretly flattered with the prospect of a Napoleon II, were fully prepared to depose the Emperor, in favour of full constitutional freedom and liberal institutions.