public satisfaction."

The day would come when public satisfaction, of a truth much mitigated by
long sufferings, would no longer suffice for the triumph of the absolute
master who dragged exhausted France across fields of battle; the
remembrance of his return to Paris after the victory of Marengo was to
recur to his sorrowful mind when he dictated at St. Helena the memoirs
explanatory of his life: "It was a great day," said he.

Already the adulations and mean worship of courtiers were encompassing
him; already, also, was revealed the provisional character of that power
which depended so completely upon the life of a single man. Sinister
reports were circulated during the campaign in Italy; the names of Carnot,
Moreau, and La Fayette had been put forward. The triumphant arrival of the
First Consul promptly baffled the intrigues in which the principals
interested had never taken part; nevertheless, he nursed against Carnot an
unjust feeling, which soon betrayed itself in his dismissal. Lucien
Bonaparte had forestalled, or badly comprehended, the wishes of his
brother; he had got Fontanes to write a pamphlet entitled "Caesar,
Cromwell, and Bonaparte," which revealed projects and hopes in favor of
the First Consul for which the public was not prepared. "Happy for the
Republic," it was said, "if Bonaparte were immortal? But where are his
successors? Who is the successor of Pericles? Frenchmen, you slumber over
an abyss, and your sleep is madly tranquil."

It was too soon to allow these premature pretensions to be thus made
public. The _finesse_ of La Fayette enabled him to penetrate the secret
hope of the First Consul, who was already occupied, and for most serious
reasons, with the re-establishment of religion in France. He was able to
say to him, with an irony that was a little scornful, "Come, general,