This pencil portrait by David is nothing but a rapid sketch, but its iconographic interest is undeniable. David doubtless executed this design towards the end of 1797, after Bonaparte’s return from Italy. It belongs to Monsieur Cheramy, a Paris lawyer.—A. D.
The salons were watched, and it is certain that those whose habitués criticised Napoleon freely were reported. One serious rupture resulted from the supervision of the salons, that with Madame de Staël. She had been an ardent admirer of Napoleon in the beginning of the Consulate, and Bourrienne tells several amusing stories of the disgust Napoleon showed at the letters of admiration and sentiment which she wrote him even so far back as the Italian campaign. If the secretary is to be believed, Madame de Staël told Napoleon, in one of these letters, that they were certainly created for each other, that it was an error in human institutions that the mild and tranquil Josephine was united to his fate, that nature evidently had intended for a hero such as he, her own soul of fire. Napoleon tore the letter to pieces, and he took pains thereafter to announce with great bluntness to Madame de Staël, whenever he met her, his own notions of women, which certainly were anything but “modern.”
As the centralization of the government increased, Madame de Staël and her friends criticized Napoleon more freely and sharply than they would have done, no doubt, had she not been incensed by his personal attitude towards her. This hostility increased until, in 1803, the First Consul ordered her out of France. “The arrival of this woman, like that of a bird of omen, has always been the signal for some trouble,” he said in giving the order. “It is not my intention to allow her to remain in France.”
In 1807 this order was repeated, and many of Madame de Staël’s friends were included in the proscription:
“I have written to the Minister of Police to send Madame de Staël to Geneva. This woman continues her trade of intriguer. She went near Paris in spite of my orders. She is a veritable plague. Speak seriously to the Minister, for I shall be obliged to have her seized by the gendarmerie. Keep an eye upon Benjamin Constant; if he meddles with anything I shall send him to his wife at Brunswick. I will not tolerate this clique.”
But when one compares the policy of restriction during the Consulate with what it had been under the old régime and during the Revolution, it certainly was far in advance in liberty, discretion, and humanity. The republican government to-day, in its repression of anarchy, and socialism has acted with less wisdom and less respect for freedom of thought than Napoleon did at this period of his career; and that, too, in circumstances less complicated and critical. If there were still dull rumors of discontent, a cabinet noir, a restricted press, a censorship over the theatre, proscriptions, even imprisonments and executions, on the whole France was happy.
“Not only did the interior wheels of the machine commence to run smoothly,” says the Duchesse d’Abrantès, “but the arts themselves, that most peaceful part of the interior administration, gave striking proofs of the returning prosperity of France. The exposition at the Salon that year (1800) was remarkably fine. Guérin, David, Gérard, Girodet, a crowd of great talents, spurred on by the emulation which always awakes the fire of genius, produced works which must some time place our school at a high rank.”
The art treasures of Europe were pouring into France. Under the direction of Denon, that indefatigable dilettante and student, who had collected in the expedition in Egypt more entertaining material than the whole Institute, and had written a report of it which will always be preferred to the “Great Work,” the galleries of Paris were reorganized and opened two days of the week to the people. Napoleon inaugurated this practice himself. Not only was Paris supplied with galleries; those department museums which to-day surprise and delight the tourist in France were then created at Angers, Antwerp, Autun, Bordeaux, Brussels, Caen, Dijon, Geneva, Grenoble, Le Mans, Lille, Lyons, Mayence, Marseilles, Montpellier, Nancy, Nantes, Rennes, Rouen, Strasburg, Toulouse, and Tours. The prix de Rome, for which there had been no money in the treasury for some time, was reëstablished.
Every effort was made to stimulate scientific research. The case of Volta is one to the point. In 1801 Bonaparte called the eminent physicist to Paris to repeat his experiments before the Institute. He proposed that a medal should be given him, with a sum of money, and in his honor he established a prize of sixty thousand francs, to be awarded to any one who should make a discovery similar in value to Volta’s.[[1]] An American—Robert Fulton—was about the same time encouraged by the First Consul. Fulton was experimenting with his submarine torpedo and diving boat, and for four years had been living in Paris and besieging the Directory to grant him attention and funds. Napoleon took the matter up as soon as Fulton brought it to him, ordered a commission appointed to look into the invention, and a grant of ten thousand francs for the necessary experiments.
The Institute was reorganized, and to encourage science and the arts he founded, in 1804, twenty-two prizes, nine of which were of ten thousand francs each, and thirteen of five thousand francs each. They were to be awarded every ten years by the emperor himself, on the 18th Brumaire. The first distribution of these prizes was to have taken place in 1809, but the judges could not agree on the laureates; and before a conclusion was reached, the empire had fallen.