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Another evening, while we were at Boulogne, Bonaparte led the conversation to literature. I had been deputed by the poet Lemercier, who was liked by the Consul, to take him a tragedy named "Philip Augustus," which he had just completed, and which contained certain allusions to himself. The Consul wished to read it aloud -myself as his sole audience. It was droll to hear him, who was always in a hurry, even when he had nothing to do, tangled up in the Alexandrine verses whose measure he did not understand, and compelled to pronounce every word before him, and so badly that it was impossible to believe that he could understand one word of what he read. Besides, the moment he opened a book, he wished to sit in judgment upon it. I asked him to give me the manuscript, and I began to read it myself; then he began to speak, and ended by taking the work again. He erased speeches, made marginal notes, found fault with the plan and the characters. He ran no great risk in his hasty judgment, for the piece was really bad. But the thing that astonished me was that at the close of the reading he told me that he did not wish the author to know that all these erasures and omissions were by a hand so important as that of the First Consul's, and ordered me to take them on my own shoulders!

To this as may readily be imagined-I made most strenuous objections, and had the greatest difficulty in inducing him to relinquish this caprice, and in making him understand that if the author were a little annoyed at his manuscript being thus disfigured, he, by reason of his rank, would suffer no inconvenience from it, while in me such a liberty would be unpardonable.

"Very well," he said—“I give up on this occasion; but please to remember that I am by no means fond of that preposterous phrase of yours -les convenances-which you are always ready with on all occasions. It is an invention of fools, who think they may get a little nearer clever people-a sort of social gag which is irksome to the strong, and only useful to those who are thoroughly commonplace. It may be that you find it convenient sometimes, for you have not very much to do in this world; but you know that I, for example, must find many occasions when I must trample les convenances under foot."

"But," I answered, may they not be, in connection with one's daily life, much like those directions which accompany dramatic works? They impart to them order and regularity, and never hamper genius except when it departs from the dictates of good taste."

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classic conventional phrases that I will never adopt.

"It is probably a great fault in me, but there are certain rules," he continued, "which I never feel. For example, that which is called style, good or bad, never touches me. I am only sensible to the strength of the thought. I loved Ossian at once, but it was for the same reason that I love too the wind and waves of the sea.

"In Egypt I tried to read the 'Iliad,' but it wearied me. As to French poets, I understand none but Corneille. He knew something of politics, was made for business, and would have made a statesman. I think I have a better appreciation of him than any one else, because in judging of him I exclude all dramatic sentiment. For example, it is only a short time since that I understood the dénoûment of Cinna.' I looked at it at first only as a way of adding pathos to a fifth act, and yet clemency is so poor a virtue, unless supported by policy, that the clemency of Augustus, all at once transformed into an easy-going prince, appeared to me an unworthy close to this fine tragedy.

"But seeing Monval on one occasion act the part, I at last got at the mystery of this great conception.

"He pronounced the words, 'Soyons amis, Cinna,' in so clever a tone that I at once understood that the act was only the ruse of a tyrant, and my admiration was at once excited for that which I had hitherto regarded as weak sentiment. He must always recite those verses so that all who hear may understand them in the same way. As to Racine, his 'Iphigénie' pleases me; this from beginning to end compels you to breathe the poetic air of Greece. In 'Britannicus' he has been circumscribed by Tacitus, against whom I am prejudiced because he does not explain enough as he goes on. Voltaire's tragedies are impassioned, but they do not search deeply enough into the recesses of the human mind. For example, his Mahomet' is neither an Arab nor a prophet. He is an impostor who might have been educated at the Polytechnic School, for the means he uses are those of the present century. The murder of the father by the son is a useless crime. Great men are never cruel unless compelled by necessity. Comedy affects me much as if I were called upon to listen to the gossip and chatter of your salons; I accept your admiration for Molière, but I do not share it. He has placed his characters amid surroundings where I have never been in the habit of going to see them move."

"Good taste is your personal enemy. If you could have blown it up with cannon, it would have vanished long since."

It would be easy to conclude from these different opinions that Bonaparte liked to study human nature only in connection with the great events of life, and that he cared little for man by himself.

I have now reached an important and painful epoch; I am about to speak of the conspiracy of Georges and of the crime which it resulted in.

I shall simply say of General Moreau just that which I have heard. I affirm nothing. It seems to me, however, that I must preface this recital by a short summary of matters as they then stood.

A certain set of people began to talk of the necessity in France that the power which governed them should be hereditary. Politic courtiers, honest Revolutionists, people who believed that the welfare and repose of France hung on one life, were disturbed in regard to the instability of the consulate. By degrees all these ideas verged toward royalty, and this would have had its advantages if they had been able to moderate and control this royalty by laws.

Revolutions have the grave inconvenience of dividing public opinion into many different shades which are all modified by the wounds received by each person under especial circumstances.

Revolutions incline people to favor those enterprises attempted by that despotism which succeeds them. To restrain Bonaparte's power, it was only necessary to pronounce the word "Liberty"; but, as only a few years before, it had been used from one end of France to the other as a shield for the great, terrible, and bloody slavery, no person could control the melancholy, if unreasonable, impression the word made upon us all.

The royalists were anxious, however, and saw that Bonaparte was daily departing further and further from the route they had marked out for him. The Jacobins, whose opposition the First Consul most feared, were uneasy. They found that it was to their antagonists that the Government seemed most desirous of giving guarantees.

The Concordat; the advances made toward the ancienne noblesse; the destruction of the Revolutionary égalité-all were an encroachment upon them. Happy, a hundred times happy, would France have been, if Bonaparte had done away with factions only, but to do this he must have been actuated by a love of justice, and his ears must have been open to the counsels of liberal generosity.

When a sovereign-it matters little what his title may be makes terms with either one or the other of the parties which give birth to civil troubles, it may always be concluded that he has

hostile intentions against the rights of the citizens which are confided to his keeping. Bonaparte, wishing to confirm his despotic plans, found himself compelled to treat with these redoubtable Jacobins, and he unfortunately was one of those who do not shrink from crimes, and regard them in fact as the only tangible guarantee. They are reassured only when they place the responsibility of these crimes on some one besides themselves.

This reasoning counts for much in the deathsentence of the Duc d'Enghien, and I am convinced that all that Napoleon did at this time was not done from any feeling of blind revenge or from any violent sentiment, but was simply the result of a Machiavellian policy which determined him to clear all obstacles from his path at whatever cost.

Nor was it for the mere gratification of his vanity that Bonaparte aspired to change his consular title to that of emperor, nor must it be believed that he was the blind slave of his passions; he knew very well how to control them and submit them to his interests, and, if later he yielded more readily to his impulses, it was because he was a little intoxicated by success and flattery. This comedy of republicanism and equality which he was called on to act ever since he became First Consul wearied him inexpressibly, and deceived only those who wished to be deceived. It reminded one of those farces in the days of ancient Rome when the emperors ordered themselves to be occasionally reelected by the Senate. I have seen people who draped themselves as with a garment in a certain love of liberty, and yet who paid assiduous court to Bonaparte, declaring that they lost their esteem for him as soon as he was called Emperor. I never understood them. How was it that the authority he began to exercise as soon as he assumed the government did not enlighten them? Should they not have said, on the contrary, that he was most honest in assuming the title of a power which he was at that time exercising?

However that may be, at the time of which I write it was essential to the First Consul that he should strengthen himself in some way.

The English were excited by the threats uttered against them. Relations were again established with the Chouans, and the royalists began to look on the consulship as the intermediate step between the Directory and the throne. To this the character of one single man offered the sole obstacle: the natural conclusion was, therefore, that this man must be got rid of.

I remember having heard Bonaparte say in the summer of 1804 that he had been hurried on by events, and that his intention had been not to organize a royal form of government until two years later. He had confided his policy to

the hands of the Minister of Justice; it was a terse and sensible idea in itself, but not one which should have been acted upon at a time when the government was a revolutionary institution. I have already said that Bonaparte's first conceptions were good and great; to create and to establish was his specialty, but to submit to the laws and the institutions of even his own formation was beyond his ability.

Hampered, therefore, by the slow and regular forms of justice, and also by the slow and mediocre abilities of his Chief Justice, he abandoned himself to the innumerable agents of the police who were about him, soon placing every confidence in Fouché again, who admirably understood the art of making himself necessary. Fouché, endowed with extraordinary acuteness and clever to a degree, was an enriched Jacobin, and, as a natural consequence, disgusted with many of the principles of his party-not daring, however, to break with it lest he should need its support in days of trouble. He had not the smallest objection to seeing Bonaparte clothed with royalty. His naturally compliant nature made him ready to accept any form of government wherein he could hope to make a figure. His habits were more revolutionary than his principles-as the only state of things which he could not endure was that in which he would have sunk to a mere nullity.

It was necessary to comprehend this disposition, and also to guard against it, when one required his services. A season of trouble brought out his full value, because, as he was totally without passions and without any vindictiveness, he at such times rose far above the most of the men about him, who were all more or less troubled by fear and resentment.

Fouché has positively denied having advised the murder of the Duc d'Enghien, and in default of absolute certainty I see no reason why he should be weighed down by a crime from which he defended himself so energetically. Besides, Fouché, who saw a long way, knew very well that this crime would give to the party which Bonaparte wished to appease only a very brief satisfaction. He knew the First Consul too well to dream that he would place the King on a throne which he could occupy himself, and Fouché would unquestionably have seen at once that this murder was a mistake.

Monsieur de Talleyrand had less need than Fouché of complicating his plans by advising Bonaparte to clothe himself with kingly dignities. His enemies and Bonaparte himself have accused him of advising the murder of the unfortunate Prince, but Bonaparte and his enemies are hardly to be accepted as evidence on this point. Monsieur de Talleyrand's character is not

akin to such violence. He has told me more than once that Bonaparte informed him as well as the other two Consuls of the arrest of the Duc d'Enghien, and of the determination to which he had arrived; he added that they all three saw that words were useless, and then they said no more.

This course, perhaps, indicated weakness on the part of Monsieur de Talleyrand, but it was nevertheless his usual course, as he disdained to utter useless words merely because they satisfied the conscience. Opposition and courageous resistance might have had its effect-for a cruel sovereign, even a sanguinary one, may sometimes be induced to yield his own determination to the strong arguments which oppose him. But Bonaparte was cruel neither in disposition nor in policy; he merely wished to do that which appeared to him the promptest and surest; he said to himself that it was time that he should be done with Jacobins and royalists. The imprudence of these last furnished him with this most unfortunate chance. He snatched at it, and that which I am about to relate will clearly prove that it was all the calmness of deliberate calculation, or rather of sophistry, that he covered himself with that illustrious and innocent blood.

A few days after the first return of the King, the Duc de Revigo called on me one morning. He wished to justify himself, and to refute the accusations which weighed on his head. He spoke to me of the death of the Duc d'Enghien.

Both the Emperor and I," he said, "were deceived on that occasion. One of the subordinate agents of the Georges conspiracy had been gained over by the bribes of my police; he came to tell us that one night, when the fellows were all together, the secret arrival of an important personage, who could not be mentioned, was announced; and that a few nights later an individual appeared among them who was treated with marks of great respect. This spy described this person in such a way that we at once knew he could be none other than a prince of the house of Bourbon. At this time the Duc d'Enghien was established at Ettenheim to await the success of the conspiracy. Our agents wrote that he sometimes disappeared for several days together; we at once concluded that he came to Paris, and resolved on his arrest. Afterward, when we confronted the spy with the men who were arrested, he at once recognized Pichegru as the important person he had described, and when I told this to Bonaparte he ground his heel into the earth and cried out:

"Scoundrel! To think of what he has made me do!'"

But to return: Pichegru reached France on the 15th of January, and on the 25th was con

cealed in Paris. It was known that, in the fifth year of the republic, General Moreau had denounced him to the Government as holding relations with the house of Bourbon.

Moreau was supposed to entertain republican opinions; perhaps he at last changed them in support of a constitutional monarchy. I do not know whether his family would defend him today as eagerly as then, from the accusation of having given his aid to the projects of the royalists. I do not know either if it be advisable to repose unbounded faith in admissions made in the reign of Louis XVIII. But the conduct of Moreau in 1813, and the honors accorded to his memory by our princes, incline me to believe that they for some time had had reason to rely on him.

At the time of which I speak, Moreau was greatly irritated against Bonaparte. It was suspected that he held secret communication with Pichegru-he at least kept profound silence in regard to the conspiracy. Some of the royalists took this occasion to accuse him of having shown this hesitation out of that prudence which awaits success before declaring itself. Moreau, they said, was a thoroughly commonplace man away from the field of battle. I think his reputation was too heavy for him.

"There are people," said Bonaparte, "who do not know how to carry their glory. Monk's rôle would have suited Moreau; in his place I should have laid snares as he did, but more skillfully."

It is with no intention of justifying Bonaparte that I present my doubts. Whatever Moreau's character may have been, his glory was a very positive thing-it existed, and Bonaparte should have respected it, and should have found excuses for an old companion in arms, who was angry and embittered: had the reconciliation been merely the result of politic calculations, such as Bonaparte chose to see in Corneille's Augustus, it would still have been infinitely wiser to have carried it out. But Bonaparte had, I am sure, quite an instinctive conviction of that which he called Moreau's moral treason. He thought law and justice should be satisfied when he refused to see the true face of the things which annoyed him. He was assured that proofs would be forthcoming to legitimatize the condemnation. He found himself involved, and later would see only party spirit in the judgment of the tribunals; besides, he felt that nothing could well be more disastrous for him than that so-called criminals should be adjudged innocent; and he who had been so near being compromised, could never be arrested again for nothing. After a few days the conspiracy began to be talked of. On the 17th of February, 1804, in the morning, I

went to the Tuileries; Bonaparte was in his wife's room. I was announced. They ordered me to be shown in. Madame Bonaparte seemed much concerned; her eyes were very red. Bonaparte was near the fire with little Napoleon* on his knees. He was very serious, but in his face there was no indication of violence. He played mechanically with the child.

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Do you know what I have done?" he said; and on my making a negative reply, he went on: Ah! you are astonished, and there will be a great excitement. People will not hesitate to say that I am jealous of Moreau, and that I have revenged myself upon him, and a thousand other foolish things. I jealous of Moreau! Ah! Good heavens, he owes the greater part of his glory to me; it was I who left a well-appointed army to him, and kept only raw recruits in Italy. I wished to live on the best of terms with him. I most assuredly did not fear him. In the first place, I fear no one, and Moreau least of all. I have twenty times prevented him from compromising himself. I told him that people would do their best to bring on a quarrel between us. But he is as weak as he is proud: women have managed him; party spirit has pressed him on."

As he talked Bonaparte rose, and, going to his wife, he took her by the chin, and, making her raise her head, he said: "Everybody has not such a good wife as I have. You are crying, Josephine, and why? Are you afraid?”

"No," she answered; "but I do not like what will be said."

"What would you do, then?" he asked; and, turning toward me, he added, hastily: “I have neither hatred nor revenge to gratify. I reflected long and seriously before sending to arrest Moreau. I could have closed my eyes and allowed him time to fly. Then people would have said that I did not dare to try him. It was necessary to convince them. He is guilty. I am the government. Things should go smoothly on the basis of these two facts."

I do not know if I am still under the influence of my recollections, but I must say that even now I can hardly believe that when Bonaparte uttered these words he was not speaking in good faith. I saw him make marvelous strides in the art of dissimulation, but at this time there were certain accents of truth in his voice which disappeared after a time. It may, however, have been that then I believed in him.

He left us almost immediately, and then Madame Bonaparte told me that he had hardly been in bed the night before. He had paced the floor, debating the question if he should arrest Moreau,

* The eldest child of Madame Louis Bonaparte, later Queen Hortense. He was born October 10, 1802, and died of croup, May 5, 1807.

weighing the for and against without the smallest indication of personal feeling; but toward dawn he sent for General Berthier, and after a long talk determined to send him to Grosbois, where Moreau had withdrawn. This event made much noise, and was discussed with much difference of opinion. At the tribunat, General Moreau's brother, who was a member, spoke vehemently, and produced a certain effect. The three Departments of State sent a deputation to the Consul, to congratulate him on his escape from danger. In Paris a part of the bourgeoisie, the advocates, and men of letters, all which could represent the liberal portion of the population, declared themselves in favor of Moreau. It was easy enough to recognize a certain opposition in the interest which was demonstrated in his behalf. They allowed themselves to utter threats if he were condemned by the courts. Bonaparte's private corps of detectives informed him that they had even gone so far as to swear they would tear Moreau from out his prison.

The First Consul now began to lose something of his calmness and indifference. His brotherin-law Murat, then Governor of Paris, hated Moreau, and took care to bring to Bonaparte only the most envenomed reports. He had an understanding with the Prefect of Police that the most alarming denunciations should reach his ears, and unfortunately events favored his plans. Each day new ramifications of the conspiracy were discovered, which the society of Paris refused to accept as truths. It was a little war of opinion between Bonaparte and the Parisians.

On the 29th of February the retreat of Pichegru was discovered, and he was arrested after a courageous defense. This event abated distrust, but general interest centered on Moreau. His wife adopted a tone of theatrical grief, which was not without its effect. Meanwhile Bonaparte, knowing nothing of the forms of law, found them slower than he had supposed. In the beginning, the Chief Justice had taken too little pains to make the proceedings short and clear; and yet only this fact had been reached, that Moreau had secretly received Pichegru, and listened to him without committing himself by any promises. This was not enough to insure a condemnation, which had now become imperative. Notwithstanding this great name, which was thus involved in this affair, Georges Cadoudal has always been regarded as the chief of this conspiracy.

The excitement in the Consul's palace may be better imagined than described. Questions were asked of every one, and all trifles were magnified. One day Savary took Monsieur de Rémusat aside, and said to him: "You have been a magistrate. You know the laws. Do you

think we have evidence enough to convince the bench?"

"No man has ever been condemned," said my husband, "for the mere reason that he has not denounced projects which he has learned. Not to do so is unquestionably a crime toward the Government, but not a crime which should lead to the scaffold. And, if this is all the evidence you have to offer, you have a very poor case against Moreau."

"In that case," answered Savary, "the Chief Justice has been guilty of a great folly, and he had better have contented himself with a military commission."

On the day that Pichegru was arrested all the barrières of Paris were closed, that the search for Georges Cadoudal might be faithfully prosecuted. Great disturbance was felt at his success in eluding pursuit. Fouché openly laughed at the stupidity of the police, and took advantage of this opportunity to strengthen his own position. His words rendered Bonaparte more discontented than ever, and when he saw the Parisians unwilling to accept the truth of certain facts vouched for by himself, he was determined to revenge himself.

"You see," he said, "whether or no it be possible for Frenchmen to be governed by legal and moderate institutions. I suppressed a revolutionary ministry, which was useful, for conspiracies were at once formed. I suspended my personal impressions, and abandoned to an authority independent of myself the punishment of a man who wished to destroy me; and, far from being satisfied with this, they laugh at my moderation, and falsify the motives of my conduct. I will teach them now that my intentions are not to be misunderstood.

"I will take advantage of all my power, and prove to them that I am made to govern, decide, and punish."

Bonaparte's anger had increased all the more because he felt himself in the wrong. He had thought he was to govern public opinion, and it had slipped through his fingers. In the beginning he had held himself in strict control-now he swore to himself, probably, that he would never again be caught.

That which will appear especially singular to those persons who have not realized to what point a uniform quenches all individual power of thought, is that the army on this occasion was undisturbed, and occasioned no anxiety. Soldiers obey orders, and rarely receive impressions outside of them. A very small number of officers vaguely remembered that they had served and conquered under Moreau, and the bourgeoisie was more agitated than any other class.

Monsieur de Polignac, Monsieur de Rivière,

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