"; and he instanced the want of good drinking
water. "What are your plans for giving water to Paris?" Chaptal
gave two alternatives--artesian wells or the bringing of water from
the River Ourcq to Paris. "I adopt the latter plan: go home and
order five hundred men to set to work to-morrow at La Villette to
dig the canal."

Such was the inception of a great public work which cost more than
half a million sterling. The provisioning of Paris also received
careful attention, a large reserve of wheat being always kept on hand
for the satisfaction of "a populace which is only dangerous when it is
hungry." Bonaparte therefore insisted on corn being stored and sold in
large quantities and at a very low price, even when considerable loss
was thereby entailed.[176] But besides supplying _panem_ he also
provided _circenses_ to an extent never known even in the days of
Louis XV. State aid was largely granted to the chief theatres, where
Bonaparte himself was a frequent attendant, and a willing captive to
the charms of the actress Mlle. Georges.

The beautifying of Paris was, however, the chief means employed by
Bonaparte for weaning its populace from politics; and his efforts to
this end were soon crowned with complete success. Here again the
events of the Revolution had left the field clear for vast works of
reconstruction such as would have been impossible but for the
abolition of the many monastic institutions of old Paris. On or near
the sites of the famous Feuillants and Jacobins he now laid down
splendid thoroughfares; and where the constitutionals or reds a decade
previously had perorated and fought, the fashionable world of Paris
now rolled in gilded cabriolets along streets whose names recalled the
Italian and Egyptian triumphs of the First Consul. Art and culture
bowed down to the ruler who ordered the renovation of the Louvre,
which now became the treasure-house of painting and sculpture,
enriched by masterpieces taken from many an Italian gallery. No
enterprise has more conspicuously helped to assure the position of
Paris as the capital of the world's culture than Bonaparte's grouping
of the nation's art treasures in a central and magnificent building.
In the first year of his Empire Napoleon gave orders for the
construction of vast galleries which were to connect the northern
pavilion of the Tuileries with the Louvre and form a splendid facade
to the new Rue de Rivoli. Despite the expense, th