Without an extraordinary capacity for work, no man could have done this. Napoleon would work until eleven o’clock in the evening, and be up again at three in the morning. Frequently he slept but an hour, and came back as fresh as ever. No secretary could keep up to him, and his ministers sometimes went to sleep in the Council, worn out with the length of the session. “Come, citizen ministers,” he would cry, “we must earn the money the French nation gives us.” The ministers rarely went home from the meetings that they did not find a half-dozen letters from him on their tables to be answered, and the answer must be a clear, exact, exhaustive document. “Get your information so that when you do answer me, there shall be no ‘buts,’ no ‘ifs,’ and no ‘becauses,’” was the rule Napoleon laid down to his correspondents.
He had audacity. He dared do what he would. He had no conventional notions to tie him, no master to dictate to him. The Revolution had swept out of his way the accumulated experience of centuries—all the habits, the prejudices, the ways of doing things. He commenced nearer the bottom than any man in the history of the civilized world had ever done, worked with imperial self-confidence, with a conviction that he “was not like other men;” that the moral laws, the creeds, the conventions, which applied to them, were not for him. He might listen to others, but in the end he dared do as he would.
CHAPTER IX
OPPOSITION TO THE CENTRALIZATION OF THE GOVERNMENT—GENERAL PROSPERITY
The centralization of France in Napoleon’s hands was not to be allowed to go on without interference. Jacobinism, republicanism, royalism, were deeply-rooted sentiments, and it was not long before they began to struggle for expression.
Early in the Consulate, plots of many descriptions were unearthed. The most serious before 1803 was that known as the “Opera Plot,” or “Plot of the 3d Nivôse” (December 24, 1800), when a bomb was placed in the street, to be exploded as the First Consul’s carriage passed. By an accident he was saved, and, in spite of the shock, went on to the opera.
Madame Junot, who was there, gives a graphic description of the way the news was received by the house:
“The first thirty measures of the oratorio were scarcely played, when a strong explosion like a cannon was heard.
“‘What does that mean?’ exclaimed Junot with emotion. He opened the door of the loge and looked into the corridor.... ‘It is strange; how can they be firing cannon at this hour?’ And then ‘I should have known it. Give me my hat; I am going to find out what it is....’
“At this moment the loge of the First Consul opened, and he himself appeared with Generals Lannes, Lauriston, Berthier, and Duroc. Smiling, he saluted the immense crowd, which mingled cries like those of love with its applause. Madame Bonaparte followed him in a few seconds....
“Junot was going to enter the loge to see for himself the serene air of the First Consul that I had just remarked, when Duroc came up to us with troubled face.