The attempts which had been made on the life of the First Consul gave rise to a report that he took extraordinary precautions for his safety during this journey to Lyons.  I never saw those precautions, and Bonaparte was at all times averse to adopt any.  He often repeated “That whoever would risk his own life might take his.”  It is not true that guards preceded his carriage and watched the roads.  The Consul travelled like a private person, and very rarely had arms in his carriage.

   —­[Bonaparte may have been careless of his own safety, but that he
   took great pains in regard to his brother’s may be inferred from the
   following letter, written a few years later: 

“Take care that your valets de chambre, your cooks, the guards that sleep in your apartments, and those who come during the night to awaken you with despatches, are all Frenchmen.  No one should enter your room during the night except your aides de camp, who should sleep in the chamber that precedes your bedroom.  Your door should be fastened inside, and you ought not to open it, even to your aide de camp, until you have recognised his voice; he himself should not knock at your door until he has locked that of the room which he is in, to make sure of being alone, and of being followed by no one.  These precautions are important; they give no trouble, and they inspire confidence—­besides, they may really save your life.  You should establish these habits immediately end permanently; You ought not to be obliged to have resource to them on some emergency, which would hurt the feelings of those around you.  Do not trust only to your own experience.  The Neapolitan character has been violent in every age, and you have to do with a woman [Queen of Naples] who is the impersonation of crime” (Napoleon to Joseph, May 31, 1806.—­Du Casse, tome ii. p. 260).]—­

At this time, when the ambition of Bonaparte every day took a farther flight, General Clarke took it into his head to go into the box of the First Consul at the “Francais,” and to place himself in the front seat.  By chance the First Consul came to the theatre, but Clarke, hardly rising, did not give up his place.  The First Consul only stayed a short time, and when he came back he showed great discontent at this affectation of pride and of vanity.  Wishing to get rid of a man whom he looked on as a blundering flatterer and a clumsy critic, he sent him away as charge d’affaires to the young extemporized King of Etruria, where Clarke expiated his folly in a sort of exile.  This is all the “great disfavour” which has been so much spoken about, In the end General Clarke returned to favour.  Berlin knows and regrets it.

On the 25th of March of the same year England signed, at Amiens, a suspension of arms for fourteen months, which was called a treaty of peace.  The clauses of this treaty were not calculated to inspire the hope of a very long peace.  It was evident, as I have already said, that England would not evacuate Malta; and that island ultimately proved the chief cause of the rupture of the treaty of Amiens.  But England, heretofore so haughty in her bearing to the First Consul, had at length treated with him as the Head of the French Government.  This, as Bonaparte was aware, boded well for the consolidation of his power.