Several of the old nobility who had been ruined by the revolution, were not unwilling to accept employments at court.  It is well known by what a gross insult Bonaparte rewarded their complaisance.  “I proposed to give them rank in my army, and they declined it; I offered them places in the administration, and they refused them; but when I opened my anti-chambers, they rushed into them in crowds.”  They had no longer any asylum but in his power.  Several gentlemen, on this occasion, set an example of the most noble resistance; but how many others have represented themselves as menaced before they had the least reason for apprehension! and how many more have solicited for themselves or their families, employments at court, which all of them, ought to have spurned at!  The military or the administrative careers are the only ones in which we can flatter ourselves with being useful to our country, whoever may be the chief who governs it; but employments at court render you dependant on the man, and not on the state.

Registers were made to receive votes for the empire, like those which had been opened for the consulship for life; even all those who did not sign, were, as in the former instance, reckoned as voting for; and the small number of individuals who thought proper to write no, were dismissed from their employments.  M. de Lafayette, the constant friend of liberty, again exhibited an invariable resistance; he had the greater merit, because already in this country of bravery, they no longer knew how to estimate courage.  It is quite necessary to make this distinction, as we see the divinity of fear reign in France over the most intrepid warriors.  Bonaparte would not even subject himself to the law of hereditary monarchy, but reserved the power of adopting and choosing his successor in the manner of the East.  As he had then no children, he wished not to give his own family the least right; and at the very moment of his elevating them to ranks to which assuredly they had no pretensions, he subjected them to his will by profoundly combined decrees, which entwined the new thrones with chains.

The fourteenth of July was again celebrated this year, (1804) because it was said the empire consecrated all the benefits of the revolution.  Bonaparte had said that storms had strengthened the roots of government; he pretended that the throne would guarantee liberty:  he repeated in all manner of ways, that Europe would be tranquillized by the re-establishment of monarchy in the government of France.  In fact, the whole of Europe, with the exception of illustrious England, recognized his new dignity:  he was styled my brother, by the knights of the ancient royal brotherhood.  We have seen in what manner he has rewarded them for their fatal condescension.  If he had been sincerely desirous of peace, even old King George himself, whose reign has been the most glorious in the English annals, would have been obliged to recognize him as his equal.  But, a very few days after his coronation, Bonaparte pronounced some words which disclosed all his purposes:  “People laugh at my new dynasty; in five years time it will be the oldest in all Europe.”  And from that moment he has never ceased tending towards this end.