No man was ever so fond of contrasts as Bonaparte.  He liked, above everything, to direct the affairs of war whilst seated in his easy chair, in the cabinet of St. Cloud, and to dictate in the camp his decrees relative to civil administration.  Thus, at the camp of Boulogne, he founded the decennial premiums, the first distribution of which he intended should take place five years afterwards, on the anniversary of the 18th Brumaire, which was an innocent compliment to the date of the foundation of the Consular Republic.  This measure also seemed to promise to the Republican calendar a longevity which it did not attain.  All these little circumstances passed unobserved; but Bonaparte had so often developed to me his theory of the art of deceiving mankind that I knew their true value.  It was likewise at the camp of Boulogne that, by a decree emanating from his individual will, he destroyed the noblest institution of the Republic, the Polytechnic School, by converting it into a purely military academy.  He knew that in that sanctuary of high study a Republican spirit was fostered; and whilst I was with him he had often told me it was necessary that all schools, colleges, and establishments for public instruction should be subject to military discipline.  I frequently endeavoured to controvert this idea, but without success.

It was arranged that Josephine and the Emperor should meet in Belgium.  He proceeded thither from the camp of Boulogne, to the astonishment of those who believed that the moment for the invasion of England had at length arrived.  He joined the Empress at the Palace of Lacken, which the Emperor had ordered to be repaired and newly furnished with great magnificence.

The Emperor continued his journey by the towns bordering on the Rhine.  He stopped first in the town of Charlemagne, passed through the three bishoprics,

   —­[There are two or three little circumstances in connection with
   this journey that seem worth inserting here: 

Mademoiselle Avrillion was the ‘femme de chambre’ of Josephine, and was constantly about her person from the time of the first Consulship to the death of the Empress in 1814.  In all such matters as we shall quote from them, her memoirs seem worthy of credit.  According to Mademoiselle, the Empress during her stay at Aix-la- Chapelle, drank the waters with much eagerness and some hope.  As the theatre there was only supplied with some German singers who were not to Josephine’s taste, she had part of a French operatic company sent to her from Paris.  The amiable creole had always a most royal disregard of expense.  When Bonaparte joined her, he renewed his old custom of visiting his wife now and then at her toilet, and according to Mademoiselle Avrillion, he took great interest in the subject of her dressing.  She says, “It was a most extraordinary thing for us to see the man whose head was filled with such vast affairs enter into the most minute details of