About the end of June Bonaparte proceeded, with Josephine, on his journey to Belgium and the seaboard departments.  Many curious circumstances were connected with this journey, of which I was informed by Duroc after the First Consul’s return.  Bonaparte left Paris on the 24th of June, and although it was not for upwards of a year afterwards that his brow was encircled with the imperial-diadem, everything connected with the journey had an imperial air.  It was formerly the custom, when the Kings of France entered the ancient capital of Picardy, for the town of Amiens to offer them in homage some beautiful swans.  Care was taken to revive this custom, which pleased Bonaparte greatly, because it was treating him like a King.  The swans were accepted, and sent to Paris to be placed in the basin of the Tuileries, in order to show the Parisians the royal homage which the First Consul received when absent from the capital.

It was also during this journey that Bonaparte began to date his decrees from the places through which he passed.  He had hitherto left a great number of signatures in Paris, in order that he might be present, as it were, even during his absence, by the acts of his Government.  Hitherto public acts had been signed in the name of the Consuls of the Republic.  Instead of this formula, he substituted the name of the Government of the Republic.  By means of this variation, unimportant as it might appear, the Government was always in the place where the First Consul happened to be.  The two other Consuls were now mere nullities, even in appearance.  The decrees of the Government, which Cambaceres signed during the campaign of Marengo, were now issued from all the towns of France and Belgium which the First Consul visited during his six weeks’ journey.  Having thus centred the sole authority of the Republic in himself, the performers of the theatre of the Republic became, by a natural consequence, his; and it was quite natural that they should travel in his suite, to entertain the inhabitants of the towns in which he stopped by their performances.  But this was not all.  He encouraged the renewal of a host of ancient customs.  He sanctioned the revival of the festival of Joan of Arc at Orleans, and he divided the Institute into four classes, with the intention of recalling the recollection of the old academies, the names of which, however, he rejected, in spite of the wishes and intrigues of Suard and the Abby Morellet, who had gained over Lucien upon this point.

However, the First Consul did not give to the classes of the Institute the rank which they formerly possessed as academies.  He placed the class of sciences in the first rank, and the old French Academy in the second rank.  It must be acknowledged that, considering the state of literature and science at that period, the First Consul did not make a wrong estimate of their importance.