Bonaparte’s contempt, or, more properly speaking, his dislike of literature, displayed itself particularly in the feeling he cherished towards some men of distinguished literary talent.  He hated Chenier, and Ducis still more.  He could not forgive Chenier for the Republican principles which pervaded his tragedies; and Ducis excited in him; as if instinctively, an involuntary hatred.  Ducis, on his part, was not backward in returning the Consul’s animosity, and I remember his writing some verses which were inexcusably violent, and overstepped all the bounds of truth.  Bonaparte was so singular a composition of good and bad that to describe him as he was under one or other of these aspects would serve for panegyric or satire without any departure from truth.  Bonaparte was very fond of Bernardin Saint-Pierre’s romance of ’Paul and Virginia’, which he had read in his boyhood.  I remember that he one day tried to read ‘Les etudes de la Nature’, but at the expiration of a quarter of an hour he threw down the book, exclaiming, “How can any one read such silly stuffy.  It is insipid and vapid; there is nothing in it.  These are the dreams of a visionary!  What is nature?  The thing is vague and unmeaning.  Men and passions are the subjects to write about—­there is something there for study.  These fellows are good for nothing under any government.  I will, however, give them pensions, because I ought to do so, as Head of the State.  They occupy and amuse the idle.  I will make Lagrange a Senator—­he has a head.”

Although Bonaparte spoke so disdainfully of literary men it must not be taken for granted that he treated them ill.  On the contrary, all those who visited at Malmaison were the objects of his attention, and even flattery.  M. Lemercier was one of those who came most frequently, and whom Bonaparte received with the greatest pleasure.  Bonaparte treated M. Lemercier with great kindness; but he did not like him.  His character as a literary man and poet, joined to a polished frankness, and a mild but inflexible spirit of republicanism, amply sufficed to explain Bonaparte’s dislike.  He feared M. Lemercier and his pen; and, as happened more than once, he played the part of a parasite by flattering the writer.  M. Lemercier was the only man I knew who refused the cross of the Legion of Honour.

Bonaparte’s general dislike of literary men was less the result of prejudice than circumstances.  In order to appreciate or even to read literary works time is requisite, and time was so precious to him that he would have wished, as one may say, to shorten a straight line.  He liked only those writers who directed their attention to positive and precise things, which excluded all thoughts of government and censures on administration.  He looked with a jealous eye on political economists and lawyers; in short, as all persons who in any way whatever meddled with legislation and moral improvements.  His hatred of discussions on those subjects was strongly