with great presence of mind, he bade them drive as fast as they could to the theatre, which he alone of all the party entered with an unruffled countenance.  He had escaped most narrowly.  The coachman, happening to be intoxicated, drove more rapidly than was his custom.[38] The engine exploded half a minute after the carriage had passed it—­killing twenty persons, wounding fifty-three (among whom was St. Regent, the assassin who fired the train), and shattering the windows of several houses on both sides of the street.

The audience in the opera-house, when the news was divulged, testified their feelings with enthusiasm.  The atrocity of the conspiracy roused universal horror and indignation, and invested the person of the Chief Consul with a new species of interest.  The assassins were tried fairly, and executed, glorying in their crime:  and, in the momentary exaltation of all men’s minds, an edict of the senate, condemning to perpetual exile 130 of the most notorious leaders of the Terrorists, was received with applause.  But Napoleon himself despised utterly the relics of that odious party; and the arbitrary decree in question was never put into execution.

The Chief Consul, nevertheless, was not slow to avail himself of the state of the public mind, in a manner more consistent with his prudence and farsightedness.  It was at this moment that the erection of a new tribunal, called the Special Commission, consisting of eight judges, without jury, and without revision or appeal, was proposed to the legislative bodies.  To their honour the proposal was carried by very narrow majorities; for after that judicature was established, the Chief Consul had, in effect, the means of disposing of all who were suspected of political offences, according to his own pleasure.  Another law which soon succeeded, and which authorised the chief magistrate to banish disaffected persons, as “enemies of the state,” from Paris or from France, whenever such steps should seem proper, without the intervention of any tribunal whatever, completed (if it was yet incomplete) the despotic range of his power:  and the police, managed as that fearful engine was by Fouche, presented him with the most perfect means of carrying his purposes into execution.

A singular anecdote belongs to this time—­(December, 1800).  During the effervescence of public opinion consequent on the affair of the infernal machine, there appeared a pamphlet, entitled, “Parallel between Caesar, Cromwell, Monk, and Bonaparte"[39]—­a production evidently designed to favour the assumption of regal dignity by the Consul.  Appearing at such a moment, it could not fail to excite a vivid sensation; the confidential friends of Napoleon assured him, in one voice, that the publication was likely to injure him.  He sent for Fouche, and reproached him violently for suffering such a pamphlet to appear.  The minister of police heard him with perfect coolness, and replied