and you only add to their extravagance. In the Mort de Pompée, you do not play Cæsar like a hero; in Britannicus, you do not play Nero like a tyrant.” Every one knows the corrections which Talma afterwards made in his performances of these celebrated characters.
CONTRACTORS, &C. DURING THE REVOLUTION.—THE EMPEROR’S CREDIT ON HIS RETURN FROM ELBA.—HIS REPUTATION IN THE PUBLIC OFFICES AS A RIGID INVESTIGATOR.—MINISTERS OF FINANCE AND THE TREASURY.—CADASTRE.
29th.—At six o’clock, the Emperor, having finished his daily occupations, walked in the garden. We then took a drive in the calash: it was quite dark, and rained very fast when we returned.
After dinner, while coffee was served round, which we took without rising from our seats at the dining-table, the conversation turned on what were termed Agents daring the Revolution, and the great fortunes which they acquired. The Emperor knew the name, the family, the profession, and the character, of every one of these men.
Scarcely had Napoleon attained the Consulship when he became engaged in a dispute with the celebrated Madame Recamier, whose father held a situation in the Post-office department. Napoleon, on first taking the reins of Government, was obliged to sign in confidence a great number of lists; but he soon established the most rigid inspection in every department. He discovered that a correspondence with the Chouans was going on under the connivance of M. Bernard, the father of Madame Recamier. He was immediately dismissed, and narrowly escaped being brought to a trial, by which he would doubtless have been condemned to death. His daughter flew to the First Consul, and, at her solicitation, Napoleon exempted M. Bernard from taking his trial, but was resolute with respect to his dismissal. Madame Recamier, who had been accustomed to ask for every thing, and to obtain every thing, would be satisfied with nothing less than the re-instatement of her father. Such were the manners of those times. The severity of the First Consul excited loud animadversions; it was a thing quite unusual. Madame Recamier and her party, which was very numerous, never forgave him.
The contractors and agents were the class which, above all, excited the uneasiness of the new Supreme Magistrate, who called them the scourge and the plague of the nation. The Emperor observed that all France would not have satisfied the ambition of those of Paris alone; that, when he came to the head of affairs, they constituted an absolute power; and that they were most dangerous to the state, whose springs were obstructed by their intrigues, joined to those of their numerous dependents.—In truth, said he, they could never be regarded as any thing but sources of corruption and ruin, like Jews and usurers. They had disgraced the Directory, and they wished in like manner to control the Consulate. It may be said that at that period they enjoyed the highest rank and influence in society.
“One of the principal retrograde steps,” said the Emperor, “which I took, with the view of restoring the past state and manners of society, was to throw all this false lustre back into the crowd. I never would raise any of this class to distinction: of all aristocracies this appeared to me the worst.” The Emperor rendered to Lebrun the justice of having especially confirmed him in this principle. “The party always disliked me for this,” said the Emperor; “but they were still less inclined to pardon the rigid enquiry which I instituted into their accounts with the Government.”
The Emperor said that in business of this sort he turned the service of his Council of State to the best account. He used to appoint a committee of four or five members of the Council, men of integrity and intelligence. They made their report to him, and, if the case required farther investigation, they wrote at the bottom of the report: Referred to the Grand Judge to enforce the laws. The individuals implicated generally endeavoured to compromise the affair, when it arrived at this point. They would disgorge, one, two, three, or four millions, rather than suffer the business to be legally investigated. The Emperor was well aware, that all these facts were misrepresented in the different circles of the capital, that they produced him many enemies, and drew down upon him the reproach of arbitrariness and tyranny. But he thus acquitted a great duty to the mass of society, who must have been grateful to him for the measures he adopted towards these bloodsuckers of the public.
“Men are always the same,” said the Emperor: “from the time of Pharamond downwards, contractors have always acted thus, and people have always acted in the same way towards them. But at no period of the monarchy were they ever attacked in so legal a form, or assailed so energetically and openly as by me. Even among the contractors themselves, the few individuals who possessed honesty and integrity found in this extreme severity a new guarantee for their own conduct. A remarkable instance of this occurred after my return from Elba. Some houses in London and Amsterdam secretly negotiated with me a loan of from 80 to 100,000,000, at a profit of seven or eight per cent. The net sum which was deposited in the Treasury of Paris, was paid to them by rentes on the great book at fifty, which were then distributed among the public at fifty-six or fifty-seven.”
This resource, so useful in the crisis in which the Emperor was placed, and which must at the same time have been so satisfactory and flattering to himself personally, proves the real opinion that was entertained of Napoleon in Europe, and the confidence which he inspired. This negotiation, which was unknown at the time, explains whence the Emperor derived the financial resources of which he suddenly found himself possessed on his return from Elba; which was a great subject of conjecture at the time.
The Emperor himself said that he enjoyed singular reputation among the heads of offices and accountants. The examination of accounts was a thing which he very well understood. “The circumstance that first gained me reputation, in this way, was that, while balancing a yearly account during the Consulate, I discovered an error of 2,000,000 to the disadvantage of the Republic. M. Dufresne, who was then chief of the treasury, and who was a perfectly honest man, at first would not believe that the error existed. However, it was an affair of figures; the fact could not be denied. At the treasury several months were occupied in endeavouring to discover the error. It was at length found in an account of the contractor Seguin, who immediately acknowledged it, on being shewn the accounts, and restored the money, saying it was a mistake.”
On another occasion as the Emperor was examining the accounts of the pay of the garrison of Paris, he observed an article of sixty and some odd thousand francs set down to a detachment which had never been in the capital. The minister made a note of the error, merely from complaisance, but was convinced in his own mind that the Emperor was mistaken. Napoleon however proved to be right, and the sum was restored.
The Emperor regarded as a matter of the highest importance the separation of the departments of finance and the treasury, both for the sake of keeping the business of the two departments distinct, and for enabling them to become mutual checks to each other. The minister of the treasury, under a sovereign like Napoleon, was the most important man in the empire; not merely as a minister of the treasury, but as comptroller-general. All the accounts of the empire came under his examination, and he was thus enabled to detect every kind of peculation and abuse, and to make them known to the sovereign; and communications of this nature were daily made. To special appropriations Napoleon also attached the greatest importance, as having been among the happiest springs of his administration.
Speaking of the cadastre, he said that, according to the plan which he had drawn up, it might be considered as the real constitution of the Empire. It was the true guarantee of property, and the security for the independence of each individual; for, the tax being once fixed and established by the legislature, each individual might make his own arrangements, and had nothing to fear from the authority or arbitrary conduct of assessors, which is always the point most sensibly felt, and the surest to enforce submission. During this conversation, the Emperor gave his opinion of the talents of Messrs. Gaudin, Mollien, and Louis, as well as most of his other Ministers and Councillors of State. He concluded by observing that he had succeeded in creating a system of administration doubtless the purest and most energetic in Europe; and that he himself had the details so much at his command that he was sure he now could, merely with the help of the Moniteur, trace the complete history of the financial transactions of the Empire during his reign.
March