nting by Rene-Theodore Berthon, in the possession of the
painter's descendants in Canada.]

The same years which saw the extinction of the remnants of
legislative independence saw likewise the establishment of six state
prisons, in which were to be confined those disaffected persons who
were too powerful to be left at liberty, but whose trials in open
court would have revealed troublesome facts. The censorship of the
press was likewise reestablished with iron rigidity, and the
publishers purchased the meager immunities they were permitted to
enjoy by the payment of whatever pensions the Emperor chose to grant
to needy men of letters. Chenier the poet, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre,
the author of "Paul and Virginia," and others enjoyed, in addition to
decorations of the Legion of Honor, substantial incomes that were
virtually paid by their fellow-craftsmen; while a chosen
few--including Gros, Gerard, Guerin, Lagrange, Monge, and
Laplace--were elevated to the new baronage. Even Carnot did not
hesitate to accept employment and place from Napoleon. At first he
solicited a loan for the relief of his urgent necessities. This the
Emperor made unnecessary by ordering the War Office to pay all arrears
in his rations and other perquisites, by giving him a commission to
prepare a volume on fortification, and by according him a pension of
ten thousand francs. The ponderous sledge-hammer of the censorship was
apparently forged to kill a gnat. Nothing is known to the history of
literature so subservient and humble as the conduct of the great
majority of French writers and artists under the Empire.

There was one exception--Mme. de Stael. That overestimated woman had
gained the halo of martyrdom by the so-called persecution of the
Emperor. But the persecution was, in the opinion of keen observers,
more on her part than his. The Committee of Public Safety had found
her an intriguer, and had called upon her husband to remove her from
Paris; the Directory kept her under watch at Coppet, and ordered her
arrest should she return to France. Her aspirations were boundless,
and Mallet du Pan, royalist agent, said that she shamelessly flaunted
her charms on public occasions. In 1796, aspiring to rule the country
through her friends, she wrote to Bonaparte, who was in Italy, that
the widow Beauharnais was far from possessing the necessary qualities
to supplement those of a genius such as he was, and on his return to
Paris she at once made suspici