d his
physical powers under incredible hardships, so he sharpened those of
his mind amid the greatest difficulties. His first care was to make
sure of France. To a deputation of the servile senate he roundly
denounced all faint-hearted civil officials as menacing the authority
of law. "Timid and cowardly soldiers," he said, "may cost a nation its
independence; faint-hearted officials, however, destroy the authority
of the laws. The finest death would be that of the soldier on the
field of honor, were not that of the official who dies to defend his
monarch, the throne, and the laws still more glorious." To the council
of state he scorned all such as had continued to attribute to the
people a sovereignty which it was incapable of exercising; who derived
authority, not from the principles of justice nor from the nature of
things nor from civil rights, but from the caprice of persons who
understood neither legislation nor administration. The meaning of such
language was clear, and the words of the master sufficed to bring the
entire machine into perfect order. The great officers of state were
not slow in their response--from the police, from the university, from
the courts came protestation after protestation of loyalty; the
vocabulary of the French language was ransacked for terms to express
the most fulsome adulation. Napoleon's firm front was in itself an
inspiration, and such unanimity of devotion in high quarters confirmed
the people in their changed tendency. Soon not merely the French
nation but the whole Empire was once again under the magician's
spell. Deputations began to arrive, not only from all parts of France
itself, but from the great cities of central and western Europe, from
Rome, Florence, Turin, and Milan, from Hamburg, Mainz, and Amsterdam,
and the expressions of devotion uttered by the deputies were limited
only by the possibilities of expression. Scoffing wits recalled the
famous scene from Moliere, in which the infatuated Orgon displays
indifference to his faithful wife and shows interest only in Tartufe.

But in spite of this trenchant joke, Napoleonic government stood firm
in France, and soon, this all-important point having been gained,
there was not a little infectious enthusiasm, which grew in proportion
as the Emperor deployed with every day and hour his marvelous
faculties of administration. Reduced as the appropriations were, the
public works in Paris went on; the naval station of Brest was
c