Ignorant of the motives of so strange a perversion, I showed this letter to the First Consul.  He shrugged up his shoulders and said, laughing, “Take no notice of him, he is a fool; give yourself no further trouble about it.”

It was clear there was nothing more to be done.  It was, however, in despite of me that M. Doublet was played this ill turn.  I represented to the First Consul the inconveniences which M. Doublet might experience from this affair.  But I very rarely saw letters or reports published as they were received.  I can easily understand how particular motives might be alleged in order to justify such falsifications; for, when the path of candour and good faith is departed from, any pretest is put forward to excuse bad conduct.  What sort of a history would he write who should consult only the pages of the ‘Moniteur’?

After the vote for adding a second ten years to the duration of Bonaparte’s Consulship he created, on the 19th of May, the order of the Legion of Honour.  This institution was soon followed by that of the new nobility.  Thus, in a short space of time, the Concordat to tranquillize consciences and re-establish harmony in the Church; the decree to recall the emigrants; the continuance of the Consular power for ten years, by way of preparation for the Consulship for life, and the possession of the Empire; and the creation, in a country which had abolished all distinctions, of an order which was to engender prodigies, followed closely on the heels of each other.  The Bourbons, in reviving the abolished orders, were wise enough to preserve along with them the Legion of Honour.

It has already been seen how, in certain circumstances, the First Consul always escaped from the consequences of his own precipitation, and got rid of his blunders by throwing the blame on others—­as, for example, in the affair of the parallel between Caesar, Cromwell, and Bonaparte.  He was indeed so precipitate that one might say, had he been a gardener, he would have wished to see the fruits ripen before the blossoms had fallen off.  This inconsiderate haste nearly proved fatal to the creation of the Legion of Honour, a project which ripened in his mind as soon as he beheld the orders glittering at the button-holes of the Foreign Ministers.  He would frequently exclaim, “This is well!  These are the things for the people!”

I was, I must confess, a decided partisan of the foundation in France of a new chivalric order, because I think, in every well-conducted State, the chief of the Government ought to do all in his power to stimulate the honour of the citizens, and to render them more sensible to honorary distinctions than to pecuniary advantages.  I tried, however, at the same time to warn the First Consul of his precipitancy.  He heard me not; but I must with equal frankness confess that on this occasion I was soon freed from all apprehension with respect to the consequences of the difficulties he had to encounter in the Council and in the other constituted orders of the State.