compense for distinguished services, came the founding of the
Universite, and the publishing of the civil Code. "On his return from
Marengo, the First Consul had empowered Tronchet, Portalis, Bigot de
Preameneu, and Maleville to draw up a plan for a civil Code, for which
the preceding Assemblees had prepared the materials. This great work was
accomplished in four months. Bonaparte ordered that it should be sent to
all the judicial courts, and a number of valuable observations were thus
obtained. The section of legislation of the Conseil d'Etat examined
them, then drew up the sketches of the laws, which were communicated to
the Tribunat, and returned to the Conseil amended, clarified, but
destined to be still more so. Then, in fact, commenced, under the
presidency of the First Consul, those admirable discussions in which he
took such a glorious part. He animated every one with his ardor; he
astonished these old jurisconsults by the profundity of his views, above
all by that exquisite good sense which, in the constructing of a good
law, is worth more than all the science of the lawyers. In this manner
was elaborated that chart of the family and of property which the Corps
legislatif adopted in its session of 1804, and which received, three
years later, the name which it merited, of _Code Napoleon_."

Among the many testimonials by contemporaries to the prodigious
faculties, the authority which seemed to disengage itself from the
person of Napoleon, in this work of legislation in which lay his truest
glory, one of the latest is to be found in the _Memoires_ of the Comte
Mollien, who, after the 18th Brumaire, was called to the direction of
the _Caisse d' Amortissement_, or bureau of liquidation, just
established, and in 1806, to the post of Minister of the Treasury. "I
felt myself," he says, "if not convinced, at least vanquished, brought
to the ground, by this puissance of genius, this vigor of judgment, this
sentiment of his own infallibility, which seemed to leave to other men
only that of their inferiority. If he saw himself contradicted, his
polemics armed themselves with arguments the most pressing, as likewise,
in some cases, with a censure the most bitter, almost always with a
torrent of objections which it was impossible to foresee, still more
impossible to combat, because you would have as vainly endeavored to
seize the thread of the argument as to break it."

After Wagram, Napoleon himself perceived the waning of