Fouche, the minister of police, sent for me to say, that the first consul suspected me of having excited my friend who had spoken in the tribunate.  I replied to him, which was certainly the truth, that M. Constant was a man of too superior an understanding to make his opinions matter of reproach to a woman, and that besides, the speech in question contained absolutely nothing but reflections on the independence which every deliberative assembly ought to possess, and that there was not a word in it which could be construed into a personal reflection on the first consul.  The minister admitted as much.  I ventured to add some words on the respect due to the liberty of opinions in a legislative body; but I could easily perceive that he took no interest in these general considerations; he already knew perfectly well, that under the authority of the man whom he wished to serve, principles were out of the question, and he shaped his conduct accordingly.  But as he is a man of transcendant understanding in matters of revolution, he had already laid it down as a system to do the least evil possible, the necessity of the object admitted.  His preceding conduct certainly exhibited little feeling of morality, and he was frequently in the habit of talking of virtue as an old woman’s story.  A remarkable sagacity, however, always led him to choose the good as a reasonable thing, and his intelligence made him occasionally do what conscience would have dictated to others.  He advised me to go into the country, and assured me, that in a few days, all would be quieted.  But at my return, I was very far from finding it so.

CHAPTER 3

System of Fusion adopted by Bonaparte—­Publication of my work on Literature.

While we have seen the Christian kings take two confessors to examine their consciences more narrowly, Bonaparte chose two ministers one of the old and the other of the new regime, whose business it was to place at his disposal the Machiavelian means of two opposite systems.  In all his nominations, Bonaparte followed nearly the same rule, of taking, as it may be said, now from the right, and now from the left, that is to say, choosing alternately his officers among the aristocrats, and among the jacobins:  the middle party, that of the friends of liberty, pleased him less than all the others, composed as it was of the small numbers of persons, who in France, had an opinion of their own.  He liked much better to have to do with persons who were attached to royalist interests, or who had become stigmatized by popular excesses.  He even went so far as to wish to name as a counsellor of state a conventionalist sullied with the vilest crimes of the days of terror; but he was diverted from it by the shuddering of those who would have had to sit along with him.  Bonaparte would have been delighted to have given that shining proof that he could regenerate, as well as confound, every thing.