Smith--Peculation during the Directory--Loan raised--Modest budget
--The Consul and the Member of the Institute--The figure of the
Republic--Duroc's missions--The King of Prussia--The Emperor
Alesander--General Latour-Foisac--Arbitrary decree--Company of
players for Egypt--Singular ideas respecting literary property--
The preparatory Consulate--The journals--Sabres and muskets of
honour--The First Consul and his Comrade--The bust of Brutus--
Statues in the gallery of the Tuileries--Sections of the Council of
State--Costumes of public functionaries--Masquerades--The opera-
balls--Recall of the exiles.

It is not my purpose to say much about the laws, decrees, and 'Senatus-
Consultes', which the First Consul either passed, or caused to be passed,
after his accession to power, what were they all, with the exception of
the Civil Code? The legislative reveries of the different men who have
from time to time ruled France form an immense labyrinth, in which
chicanery bewilders reason and common sense; and they would long since
have been buried in oblivion had they not occasionally served to
authorise injustice. I cannot, however, pass over unnoticed the happy
effect produced in Paris, and throughout the whole of France, by some of
the first decisions of the Consuls. Perhaps none but those who witnessed
the state of society during the reign of Terror can fully appreciate the
satisfaction which the first steps towards the restoration of social
order produced in the breasts of all honest men. The Directory, more
base and not less perverse than the Convention, had retained the horrible
21st of January among the festivals of the Republic. One of Bonaparte's
first ideas on attaining the possession of power was to abolish this; but
such was the ascendency of the abettors of the fearful event that he
could not venture on a straightforward course. He and his two
colleagues, who were Sieyes and Roger Ducos, signed, on the 5th Nivose,