arguments was this:  “What is it that distinguishes men?  Education—­is it not?  Well, if the children of nobles be admitted into the academies, they will be as well educated as the children of the revolution, who compose the strength of my government.  Ultimately they will enter into my regiments as officers, and will naturally come in competition with those whom they regard as the plunderers of their families.  I do not wish that!”

My recollections have caused me to wander from the journey of the First Consul and Madame Bonaparte to the seabord departments and Belgium.  I have, however, little to add to what I have already stated on the subject.  I merely remember that Bonaparte’s military suite, and Lauriston and Rapp in particular, when speaking to me about the journey, could not conceal some marks of discontent on account of the great respect which Bonaparte had shown the clergy, and particularly to M. de Roquelaure, the Archbishop of Malines (or Mechlin).  That prelate, who was a shrewd man, and had the reputation of having been in his youth more addicted to the habits of the world than to those of the cloister, had become an ecclesiastical courtier.  He went to Antwerp to pay his homage to the First Consul, upon whom he heaped the most extravagant praises.  Afterwards, addressing Madame Bonaparte, he told her that she was united to the First Consul by the sacred bonds of a holy alliance.  In this harangue, in which unction was singularly blended with gallantry, surely it was a departure from ecclesiastical propriety to speak of sacred bonds and holy alliance when every one knew that those bonds and that alliance existed only by a civil contract.  Perhaps M. de Roquelaure merely had recourse to what casuists call a pious fraud in order to engage the married couple to do that which he congratulated them on having already done.  Be this as it may, it is certain that this honeyed language gained M. de Roquelaure the Consul’s favour, and in a short time after he was appointed to the second class of the Institute.

CHAPTER XXI.

1804.

The Temple—­The intrigues of Europe—­Prelude to the Continental system—­Bombardment of Granville—­My conversation with the First Consul on the projected invasion of England—­Fauche Borel—­Moreau and Pichegru—­Fouche’s manoeuvres—­The Abbe David and Lajolais—­ Fouche’s visit to St. Cloud—­Regnier outwitted by Fouche—­ My interview with the First Consul—­His indignation at the reports respecting Hortense—­Contradiction of these calumnies—­The brothers Faucher—­Their execution—­The First Consul’s levee—­My conversation with Duroc—­Conspiracy of Georges, Moreau, and Pichegru—­Moreau averse to the restoration of the Bourbons—­Bouvet de Lozier’s attempted suicide—­Arrest of Moreau—­Declaration of mm. de Polignac and de Riviere—­Connivance of the police—­Arrest of M. Carbonnet and his nephew.