o were instructed to
keep themselves as exclusive as possible. A most lavish
pension-system, as it was considered even in that age of military
splendor, drew from the army chest five hundred francs a year for
soldiers who had lost a limb; officers received as high as ten
thousand francs, according to the nature of their disabilities. But
the marshals were showered with gold. Berthier had a million; Ney,
Davout, Soult, and Bessieres, six hundred thousand each; Massena,
Augereau, Bernadotte, Mortier, and Victor, four hundred thousand
apiece; and the rest two hundred thousand. But even this was nothing
to what some of them secured later by holding several offices at once.
At one time Berthier had a yearly income of a million three hundred
and fifty-five thousand francs; Davout, of nine hundred and ten
thousand; Ney, of seven hundred and twenty-eight thousand; Massena, of
six hundred and eighty-three thousand. The ministers were able to
secure salaries averaging about two hundred thousand francs, and
ambassadors had incomes corresponding to their dignity. Caulaincourt,
the ablest of all the latter class, had eight hundred thousand francs
at St. Petersburg wherewith to support the imperial state of France.
It is interesting to note from Napoleon's letters that he had
occasionally to admonish some of these gentlemen to make use of their
titles.

The Revolution had chosen to find its artistic expression in the
correct and strict severity of classical forms. Napoleon had from the
beginning of his career been under the spell of Greek and Roman
examples. Thus it happened that the art of the First Empire was what
it is--heavy, conventional, and reminiscent. With the ever-growing
rigidity of censorship, literature sometimes took refuge in
abstractions, or, what is much the same thing, in the contemplation of
events so remote that their discussion could give no offense.
Sometimes authors accepted the curious task of defending the external
forms and results of the Revolution as expressed in the Empire, while
combating every principle from which the movement had sprung. Able men
like Chenier published some of their writings, and locked others in
their desks against a brighter day. In religion the Emperor's
principle was that his subjects should hate the English because they
were heretics, and the Pope because he was a fanatic. The "ideologues"
and "metaphysicians" were anarchists, for the public order was
endangered by their teachin