Memoirs of Napoleon, vol 7 | Page 8

was taken to revive this custom, which
pleased Bonaparte greatly, because it was treating him like a King. The
swans were accepted, and sent to Paris to be placed in the basin of the
Tuileries, in order to show the Parisians the royal homage which the
First Consul received when absent from the capital.
It was also during this journey that Bonaparte began to date his decrees
from the places through which he passed. He had hitherto left a great
number of signatures in Paris, in order that he might be present, as it
were, even during his absence, by the acts of his Government. Hitherto

public acts had been signed in the name of the Consuls of the Republic.
Instead of this formula, he substituted the name of the Government of
the Republic. By means of this variation, unimportant as it might
appear, the Government was always in the place where the First Consul
happened to be. The two other Consuls were now mere nullities, even
in appearance. The decrees of the Government, which Cambaceres
signed during the campaign of Marengo, were now issued from all the
towns of France and Belgium which the First Consul visited during his
six weeks' journey. Having thus centred the sole authority of the
Republic in himself, the performers of the theatre of the Republic
became, by a natural consequence, his; and it was quite natural that
they should travel in his suite, to entertain the inhabitants of the towns
in which he stopped by their performances. But this was not all. He
encouraged the renewal of a host of ancient customs. He sanctioned the
revival of the festival of Joan of Arc at Orleans, and he divided the
Institute into four classes, with the intention of recalling the
recollection of the old academies, the names of which, however, he
rejected, in spite of the wishes and intrigues of Suard and the Abby
Morellet, who had gained over Lucien upon this point.
However, the First Consul did not give to the classes of the Institute the
rank which they formerly possessed as academies. He placed the class
of sciences in the first rank, and the old French Academy in the second
rank. It must be acknowledged that, considering the state of literature
and science at that period, the First Consul did not make a wrong
estimate of their importance.
Although the literature of France could boast of many men of great
talent, such as La Harpe, who died during the Consulate, Ducis,
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Chenier, and Lemercier, yet they could not
be compared with Lagrange, Laplace, Monge, Fourcroy, Berthollet, and
Cuvier, whose labours have so prodigiously extended the limits of
human knowledge. No one, therefore, could murmur at seeing the class
of sciences in the Institute take precedence of its elder sister. Besides,
the First Consul was not sorry to show, by this arrangement, the slight
estimation in which he held literary men. When he spoke to me
respecting them he called them mere manufacturers of phrases. He

could not pardon them for excelling him in a pursuit in which he had no
claim to distinction. I never knew a man more insensible than
Bonaparte to the beauties of poetry or prose. A certain degree of
vagueness, which was combined with his energy of mind, led him to
admire the dreams of Ossian, and his decided character found itself, as
it were, represented in the elevated thoughts of Corneille. Hence his
almost exclusive predilection for these two authors With this exception,
the finest works in our literature were in his opinion merely
arrangements of sonorous words, void of sense, and calculated only for
the ear.
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