Some time after his nomination to the Consulate for life, anxious to perform a sovereign act, he went for the first time to preside at the Senate.  Availing myself that day of a few leisure moments I went out to see the Consular procession.  It was truly royal.  The First Consul had given orders that the military should-be ranged in the streets through which he had to pass.  On his first arrival at the Tuileries, Napoleon had the soldiers of the Guard ranged in a single line in the interior of the court, but he now ordered that the line should be doubled, and should extend from the gate of the Tuileries to that of the Luxembourg.  Assuming a privilege which old etiquette had confined exclusively to the Kings of France, Bonaparte now for the first time rode in a carriage drawn by eight horses.  A considerable number of carriages followed that of the First Consul, which was surrounded by generals and aides de camp on horseback.  Louis xiv. going to hold a bed of justice at the Parliament of Paris never displayed greater pomp than did Bonaparte in this visit to the Senate.  He appeared in all the parade of royalty; and ten Senators came to meet him at the foot of the staircase of the Luxembourg.

The object of the First Consul’s visit to the Senate was the presentation of five plans of ‘Senatus-consultes’.  The other two Consuls were present at the ceremony, which took place about the middle of August.

Bonaparte returned in the same style in which he went, accompanied by M. Lebrun, Cambaceres remaining at the Senate, of which he was President.  The five ‘Senatus-consultes’ were adopted, but a restriction was made in that which concerned the forms of the Senate.  It was proposed that when the Consuls visited the Senate they should be received by a deputation of ten members at the foot of the staircase, as the First Consul had that day been received; but Bonaparte’s brothers Joseph and Lucien opposed this, and prevented the proposition from being adopted, observing that the Second and Third Consuls being members of the Senate could not be received with such honours by their colleagues.  This little scene of political courtesy, which was got up beforehand, was very well acted.

Bonaparte’s visit to the Senate gave rise to a change of rank in the hierarchy of the different authorities composing the Government.  Hitherto the Council of State had ranked higher in public opinion; but the Senate, on the occasion of its late deputation to the Tuileries, had for the first time, received the honour of precedency.  This had greatly displeased some of the Councillors of State, but Bonaparte did not care for that.  He instinctively saw that the Senate would do what he wished more readily than the other constituted bodies, and he determined to augment its rights and prerogatives even at the expense of the rights of the Legislative Body.  These encroachments of one power upon another, authorised by the First Consul, gave rise to reports of changes