only to Bonaparte and his family.  While the Senate so complaisantly played its part in this well-get-up piece, yet, the better to impose on the credulity of the multitude, its reply, like Bonaparte’s message, resounded with the words liberty and equality.  Indeed, it was impudently asserted in that reply that Bonaparte’s accession to hereditary power would be a certain guarantee for the liberty of the press, a liberty which Bonaparte held in the greatest horror, and without which all other liberty is but a vain illusion.

By this reply of the Senate the most important step was performed.  There now remained merely ceremonies to regulate and formulas to fill up.  These various arrangements occasioned a delay of a fortnight.  On the 18th of May the First Consul was greeted for the first time by the appellation of Sire by his former colleague, Cambaceres, who at the head of the Senate went to present to Bonaparte the organic ‘Senatus-consulte’ containing the foundation of the Empire.  Napoleon was at St. Cloud, whither the Senate proceeded in state.  After the speech of Cambaceres, in which the old designation of Majesty was for the first time revived, the emperor replied:—­

All that can contribute to the welfare of the country is essentially connected with my happiness.  I accept the title which you believe to be conducive to the glory of the nation.  I submit to the sanction of the people the law of hereditary succession.  I hope that France will never repent the honours she may confer on my family.  At all events, my spirit will not be with my posterity when they cease to merit the confidence and love of the great nation.

Cambaceres next went to congratulate the Empress, and then was realised to Josephine the prediction which I had made to her three years before at Malmaison.

—­[In the original motion as prepared by Curee, the Imperial dignity was to be declared hereditary in the family of Napoleon.  Previous to being formerly read before the Tribunate, the First Consul sent for the document, and when it was returned it was found that the word family was altered to descendants.  Fabre, the President of the Tribunate, who received the altered document from Maret, seeing the effect the alteration would have on the brothers of Napoleon, and finding that Maret affected to crest the change as immaterial, took on himself to restore the original form, and in that shape it was read by the unconscious Curee to the Tribunals.  On this curious, passage see Miot de Melito, tome ii, p. 179.  As finally settled the descent of the crown in default of Napoleon’s children was limited to Joseph and Louis and their descendants, but the power of adoption was given to Napoleon.  The draft of the ‘Senates-consulte’ was heard by the Council of State in silence, and Napoleon tried in vain to get even the most talkative of the members now to speak.  The Senate were not unanimous in rendering the ‘Senatus-consulte’.