around the Paladins of a new
Gaulish chivalry. The people had recently cast off the overlordship of
the old Frankish nobles, but admiration of merit (the ultimate source
of all titles of distinction) was only dormant even in the days of
Robespierre; and its insane repression during the Terror now begat a
corresponding enthusiasm for all commanding gifts. Of this inevitable
reaction Bonaparte now made skillful use. When Berlier, one of the
leading jurists of France, objected to the new order as leading France
back to aristocracy, and contemptuously said that crosses and ribbons
were the toys of monarchy, Bonaparte replied:

"Well: men are led by toys. I would not say that in a rostrum, but
in a council of wise men and statesmen one ought to speak one's
mind. I don't think that the French love liberty and equality: the
French are not at all changed by ten years of revolution: they are
what the Gauls were, fierce and fickle. They have one
feeling--honour. We must nourish that feeling: they must have
distinctions. See how they bow down before the stars of
strangers."[161]

After so frank an exposition of motives to his own Council of State,
little more need be said. We need not credit Bonaparte or the orators
of the Tribunate with any superhuman sagacity when he and they foresaw
that such an order would prepare the way for more resplendent titles.
The Legion of Honour, at least in its highest grades, was the
chrysalis stage of the Imperial _noblesse_. After all, the new
Charlemagne might plead that his new creation satisfied an innate
craving of the race, and that its durability was the best answer to
hostile critics. Even when, in 1814, his Senators were offering the
crown of France to the heir of the Bourbons, they expressly stipulated
that the Legion of Honour should not be abolished: it has survived all
the shocks of French history, even the vulgarizing associations of
the Second Empire.

* * * * *

The same quality of almost pyramidal solidity characterizes another
great enterprise of the Napoleonic period, the codification of French
law.

The difficulties of this undertaking consisted mainly in the enormous
mass of decrees emanating from the National Assemblies, relative to
political, civil, and criminal affairs. Many of those decrees, the
offspring of a momentary enthusiasm, had found a place in the codes of
laws which were then compiled; a