seemed
to their crooked minds but the prelude to a recall of the Bourbons,
whereupon priestcraft, tithes, and feudalism would be the order of the
day. Now at last the tragedy of Vincennes threw a lurid light into the
recesses of Napoleon's ambition; and they exclaimed, "He is one of
us." It must thenceforth be war to the knife between the Bourbons and
Bonaparte; and his rule would therefore be the best guarantee for the
perpetual ownership of the lands confiscated during the
Revolution.[305]

To a materialized society that great event had come to be little more
than a big land investment syndicate, of which Bonaparte was now to be
the sole and perpetual director. This is the inner meaning of the
references to the Social Contract which figure so oddly among the
petitions for hereditary rule. The Jacobins, except a few conscientious
stalwarts, were especially alert in the feat of making extremes meet.
Fouche, who now wriggled back into favour and office, appealed to the
Senate, only seven days after the execution, to establish hereditary
power as the only means of ending the plots against Napoleon's life;
for, as the opportunist Jacobins argued, if the hereditary system were
adopted, conspiracies to murder would be meaningless, when, even if they
struck down one man, they must fail to shatter the system that
guaranteed the Revolution.

The cue having been thus dextrously given, appeals and petitions for
hereditary rule began to pour in from all parts of France. The grand
work of the reorganization of France certainly furnished a solid claim
on the nation's gratitude. The recent promulgation of the Civil Code
and the revival of material prosperity redounded to Napoleon's glory;
and with equal truth and wit he could claim the diadem as a fit reward
_for having revived many interests while none had been displaced._
Such a remark and such an exploit proclaim the born ruler of men. But
the Senate overstepped all bounds of decency when it thus addressed
him: "You are founding a new era: but you ought to make it last for
ever: splendour is nothing without duration." The Greeks who fawned on
Persian satraps did not more unman themselves than these pensioned
sycophants, who had lived through the days of 1789 but knew them not.
This fulsome adulation would be unworthy of notice did it not convey
the most signal proof of the danger which republics incur when men
lose sight of the higher aims of life and wallow among its sordid
i