with his equals of a
different class, ecclesiastics alongside of laymen, civilians alongside
of soldiers; each honored by the company of his peers, Berthollet,
Laplace and Lagrange alongside of Kellermann, Jourdan and Lefebvre,
Otto and Tronchet alongside of Massena, Augereau, Ney, Lannes, Soult and
Davout; four cardinals side by side with eighteen marshals, and likewise
even down to corporal, and to Egyptian veterans blinded by ophthalmia
on the banks of the Nile, comprising common soldiers who, through
some brilliant achievement, had won a sword or a gun of honor, as, for
instance, Coignet,[3347] who, dashing ahead with fixed bayonet, kills
five Austrian artillerymen and takes their cannon himself alone. Six
years before this he was a stable-boy on a farm and could neither read
nor write; he is now mentioned among the first of those promoted, a
colleague and almost a comrade of Monge, the inventor of descriptive
geometry, of de Fontanes, grand-master of the university, of marshals,
admirals, and the highest dignitaries, all sharing in common an
inestimable treasure, the legitimate heirs of twelve years' accumulated
glory by the sacrifice of so many heroic lives and all the more
glorified because so few,[3348] and because, in these days, a man did
not obtain the cross by twenty years of plodding in a bureau, on account
of routine punctuality, but by wonderful strokes of energy and audacity,
by wounds, by braving death a hundred times and looking it in the face
daily.

Henceforth, legally as well as in public opinion, they form the staff of
the new society, its declared, verified notables, enjoying precedences
and even privileges. On passing along the street the sentinel
presents arms; a company of twenty-five soldiers attends their
funeral procession; in the electoral colleges of the department or
arrondissement they are electors by right and without being balloted
for, simply by virtue of their rank. Their sons are entitled to
scholarships in La Fleche, at Saint-Cyr, and in the lycees, and their
daughters at Ecouen or Saint-Denis. With the exception of a title, as
formerly, they lack nothing for filling the place of the old nobility,
and Napoleon re-creates this title for their benefit. The title itself
of chevalier, count, duke or prince carries along with an idea of social
superiority; when announced in a drawing room, when it precedes the
first sentence of an address, those who are present do not remain
inattenti