legislative body; but I could easily perceive that
he took no interest in these general considerations; he already knew
perfectly well, that under the authority of the man whom he wished
to serve, principles were out of the question, and he shaped his
conduct accordingly. But as he is a man of transcendant
understanding in matters of revolution, he had already laid it down
as a system to do the least evil possible, the necessity of the
object admitted. His preceding conduct certainly exhibited little
feeling of morality, and he was frequently in the habit of talking
of virtue as an old woman's story. A remarkable sagacity, however,
always led him to choose the good as a reasonable thing, and his
intelligence made him occasionally do what conscience would have
dictated to others. He advised me to go into the country, and
assured me, that in a few days, all would be quieted. But at my
return, I was very far from finding it so.

CHAPTER 3

System of Fusion adopted by Bonaparte--Publication of my work
on Literature.

While we have seen the Christian kings take two confessors to
examine their consciences more narrowly, Bonaparte chose two
ministers one of the old and the other of the new regime, whose
business it was to place at his disposal the Machiavelian means of
two opposite systems. In all his nominations, Bonaparte followed
nearly the same rule, of taking, as it may be said, now from the
right, and now from the left, that is to say, choosing alternately
his officers among the aristocrats, and among the jacobins: the
middle party, that of the friends of liberty, pleased him less than
all the others, composed as it was of the small numbers of persons,
who in France, had an opinion of their own. He liked much better to
have to do with persons who were attached to royalist interests, or
who had become stigmatized by popular excesses. He even went so far
as to wish to name as a counsellor of state a conventionalist
sullied with the vilest crimes of the days of terror; but he was
diverted from it by the shuddering of those who would have had to
sit along with him. Bonaparte would have been delighted to have
given that shining proof that he could regenerate, as well as
confound, every thing.

What particularly characterizes the government of Bonaparte, is his
profound contempt for the intellectual riches of human nature;
virtue, mental dignity, religion, enthusiasm, these, these are in
his eyes, the eternal e