to indicate that he considered Republican designations incompatible with the forms due to the clergy:  the clergy were especially interested in the restoration of monarchy.  It may, perhaps, be thought that I dwell too much on trifles; but I lived long enough in Bonaparte’s confidence to know the importance he attached to trifles.  The First Consul restored the old names of the days of the week, while he allowed the names of the months, as set down in the Republican calendar, to remain.  He commenced by ordering the Moniteur to be dated “Saturday,” such a day of “Messidor.”  “See,” said he one day, “was there ever such an inconsistency?  We shall be laughed at!  But I will do away with the Messidor.  I will efface all the inventions of the Jacobins.”

The clergy did not disappoint the expectations of the First Consul.  They owed him much already, and hoped for still more from him.  The letter to the Bishops, etc., was the signal for a number of circulars full of eulogies on Bonaparte.

These compliments were far from displeasing to the First Consul, who had no objection to flattery though he despised those who meanly made themselves the medium of conveying it to him.  Duroc once told me that they had all great difficulty in preserving their gravity when the cure of a parish in Abbeville addressed Bonaparte one day while he was on his journey to the coast.  “Religion,” said the worthy cure, with pompous solemnity, “owes to you all that it is, we owe to you all that we are; and I, too, owe to you all that I am.”

—­[Not so fulsome as some of the terms used a year later when Napoleon was made Emperor.  “I am what I am,” was placed over a seat prepared for the Emperor.  One phrase, “God made Napoleon and then rested,” drew from Narbonne the sneer that it would have been better if the Deity had rested sooner.  “Bonaparte,” says Joseph de Maistre, “has had himself described in his papers as the ’Messenger of God.’  Nothing more true.  Bonaparte comes straight from heaven, like a thunderbolt.” (Saints-Benve, Caureries, tome iv. p. 203.)]

CHAPTER XX.

1803.

Presentation of Prince Borghese to Bonaparte—­Departure for Belgium Revival of a royal custom—­The swans of Amiens—­Change of formula in the acts of Government—­Company of performers in Bonaparte’s suite—­Revival of old customs—­Division of the institute into four classes—­Science and literature—­Bonaparte’s hatred of literary men —­Ducis—­Bernardin de Saint-Pierre—­Chenier and Lemercier—­ Explanation of Bonaparte’s aversion to literature—­Lalande and his dictionary—­Education in the hands of Government—­M. de Roquelaure, Archbishop of Malines.

In the month of April 1803 Prince Borghese, who was destined one day to become Bonaparte’s brother-in-law by marrying the widow of Leclerc, was introduced to the First Consul by Cardinal Caprara.