had long enjoyed the prerogatives of a distinguished name, and who
should leave his wife in misery while he lived in abundance: could we
associate with a man like that?"

Soon afterward the battle of Marengo was fought. All her passion being
now turned into hate, the scheming woman openly desired Bonaparte's
defeat. Thenceforward she was an avowed and bitter enemy; he would
have called her a conspirator. The ten years of her banishment, as she
herself declared, were occupied in wandering from court to court in
England, Russia, Prussia, and Sweden, engaged in the task of
undermining the Emperor's name and fame, and in fomenting the
coalitions which eventually ruined him. As Bonaparte became an
ultra-imperialist she became an ultra-liberal. Her book on Germany,
published in 1810, was a laudation, in the main just and fair, of a
regenerated land; but it held up to France as a model the achievements
of the country which was now her bitterest foe. The censors gave it a
fictitious renown by ordering its complete suppression.

When, in November, 1810, the decennial prizes, instituted as a spur to
literature and science, were distributed, the judges could find
nothing in science later than 1803 worthy of their favor; but the
prize-winners, old as they were, were all men of real distinction. The
names of the literary men who were crowned are now known only to the
student of history. Napoleon demanded why the name of Chateaubriand
had been omitted from the list, as it was. He may have remembered, as
one of his detractors suggests, that in that writer's great book the
Roman doctrine of obedience to constituted authority was attractively
presented; or else, and more probably, he may have wished his list of
authors to be more brilliant. The Emperor may have instituted those
prizes, as his apologists declared he himself said that he did, to
keep active minds from occupying themselves with politics; but the
exhibition of how the Empire had crushed out originality and fecundity
in the French brain must have appalled him, whatever were his
thoughts.

During the winter of 1810-11 Napoleon's private life was virtually
devoted to beneficence. In addition to the favors granted to Carnot,
he lavished money on other objects, some not so worthy. Canova, who
had been called from Rome to make a portrait-statue of the Empress,
obtained a substantial grant for the learned societies of that city.
Chenier, like Carnot, had been a pronounced adv