Bonaparte determined that all the new streets of Paris should be 40 feet wide, and be provided with foot-pavements; in short, he thought nothing too grand for the embellishment of the capital of a country which he wished to make the first in the world.  Next to war, he regard the embellishment of Paris as the source of his glory; and he never considered a victory fully achieved until he had raised a monument to transmit its memory to posterity.  He, wanted glory, uninterrupted glory, for France as well as for himself:  How often, when talking over his schemes, has he not said, “Bourrienne, it is for France I am doing all this!  All I wish, all I desire, the end of all my labours is, that my name should be indissolubly connected with that of France!”

Paris is not the only city, nor is France the only kingdom, which hears traces of Napoleon’s passion for great and useful monuments.  In Belgium, in Holland, in Piedmont, in all Italy, he executed great improvements.  At Turin a splendid bridge was built over the Po, in lieu of an old bridge which was falling in ruins.

How many things were undertaken and executed in Napoleon’s short and eventful reign!  To obviate the difficulty of communication between Metz and Mayence a magnificent road was made, as if by magic, across impracticable marshes and vast forests.  Mountains were cut through and ravines filled up.  He would not allow nature more than man to resist him.  One day when he was proceeding to Belgium by the way of Civet, he was detained for a short time at Little Givet, on the right bank of the Meuse, in consequence of an accident which happened to the ferry-boat.  He was within a gunshot of the fortress of Charlemont, on the left bank, and in the vexation which the delay occasioned he dictated the following decree:  “A bridge shall be built over the Meuse to join Little Civet to Great Givet.  It shall be terminated during the ensuing campaign.”  It was completed within the prescribed time:  In the great work of bridges and highways Bonaparte’s chief object was to remove the obstacles and barriers which nature had raised up as the limits of old France so as to form a junction with the provinces which he successively annexed to the Empire.  Thus in Savoy a road, smooth as a garden-walk, superseded the dangerous ascents and descents of the wood of Bramant; thus was the passage of Mont Cenis a pleasant promenade at almost every season of the year; thus did the Simplon bow his head, and Bonaparte might have said, “There are now my Alps,” with more reason than Louis xiv. said, “There are now no Pyrenees.”

—­[Metternich (tome iv. p. 187) says on this subject, ’If you look closely at the course of human affairs you will make strange discoveries.  For instance, that the Simplon Pass has contributed as surely to Napoleon’s immortality as the numerous works done in the reign of the Emperor Francis will fail to add to his.]—­

Such was the implicit confidence which Bonaparte reposed in me that I was often alarmed at the responsibility it obliged me to incur.