Bonaparte, as I have before observed, loved contrasts; and I remember at the very time he was acting so violently against Latour-Foissac he condescended to busy himself about a company of players which he wished to send to Egypt, or rather that he pretended to wish to send there, because the announcement of such a project conveyed an impression of the prosperous condition of our Oriental colony.  The Consuls gravely appointed the Minister of the Interior to execute this business, and the Minister in his turn delegated his powers to Florence, the actor.  In their instructions to the Minister the Consuls observed that it would be advisable to include some female dancers in the company; a suggestion which corresponds with Bonaparte’s note, in which were specified all that he considered necessary for the Egyptian expedition.

The First Consul entertained singular notions respecting literary property.  On his hearing that a piece, entitled ’Misanthropie et Repentir’, had been brought out at the Odeon, he said to me, “Bourrienne, you have been robbed.”—­“I, General? how?”—­“You have been robbed, I tell you, and they are now acting your piece.”  I have already mentioned that during my stay at Warsaw I amused myself with translating a celebrated play of Kotzebue.  While we were in Italy I lent Bonaparte my translation to read, and he expressed himself much pleased with it.  He greatly admired the piece, and often went to see it acted at the Odeon.  On his return he invariably gave me fresh reasons for my claiming what he was pleased to call my property.  I represented to him that the translation of a foreign work belonged to any one who chose to execute it.  He would not, however, give up his point, and I was obliged to assure him that my occupations in his service left me no time to engage in a literary lawsuit.  He then exacted a promise from me to translate Goethe’s ‘Werther’.  I told him it was already done, though indifferently, and that I could not possibly devote to the subject the time it merited.  I read over to him one of the letters I had translated into French, and which he seemed to approve.

That interval of the Consular Government during which Bonaparte remained at the Luxembourg may be called the preparatory Consulate.  Then were sown the seeds of the great events which he meditated, and of those institutions with which he wished to mark his possession of power.  He was then, if I may use the expression, two individuals in one:  the Republican general, who was obliged to appear the advocate of liberty and the principles of the Revolution; and the votary of ambition, secretly plotting the downfall of that liberty and those principles.