When we had received the answer of mm.  Percier and Fontaine, we again had a conversation on the subject of the bridge.  I told the First Consul that I perfectly concurred in the opinion of mm.  Fontame and Percier; how ever, he would have his own way, and thus was authorised the construction of the toy which formed a communication between the Louvre and the Institute.  But no sooner was the Pont des Arts finished than Bonaparte pronounced it to be mean and out of keeping with the other bridges above and below it.  One day when visiting the Louvre he stopped at one of the windows looking towards the Pout des Arts and said, “There is no solidity, no grandeur about that bridge.  In England, where stone is scarce, it is very natural that iron should be used for arches of large dimensions.  But the case is different in France, where the requisite material is abundant.”

The infernal machine of the 3d Nivose, of which I shall presently speak more at length, was the signal for vast changes in the quarter of the Tuileries.  That horrible attempt was at least so far attended by happy results that it contributed to the embellishment of Paris.  It was thought more advisable for the Government to buy and pull down the houses which had been injured by the machine than to let them be put under repair.  As an example of Bonaparte’s grand schemes in building I may mention that, being one day at the Louvre, he pointed towards St. Germain l’Auxerrois and said to me, “That is where I will build an imperial street.  It shall run from here to the Barriere du Trone.  It shall be a hundred feet broad, and have arcades and plantations.  This street shall be the finest in the world.”

The palace of the King of Rome, which was to face the Pont de Jena and the Champ de Mars, would have been in some measure isolated from Paris, with which, however, it was to be connected by a line of palaces.  These were to extend along the quay, and were destined as splendid residences for the Ambassadors of foreign sovereigns, at least as long as there should be any sovereigns Europe except Napoleon.  The Temple of Glory, too, which was to occupy the site of the Church of la Madeleine, was never finished.  If the plan of this monument, proved the necessity. which Bonaparte felt of constantly holding out stimulants to his soldiers, its relinquishment was at least a proof of his wisdom.  He who had reestablished religious worship in France, and had restored to its destination the church of the Invalides, which was for a time metamorphosed into the Temple of Mars, foresaw that a Temple of Glory would give birth to a sort of paganism incompatible with the ideas of the age.

The recollection of the magnificent Necropolis of Cairo frequently recurred to.  Bonaparte’s mind.  He had admired that city of the dead, which he had partly contributed to people; and his design was to make, at, the four cardinal points of Paris, four vast cemeteries on the plan of that at Cairo.