wish to see France dismembered.  Let us avail ourselves of his unrivalled talents in the war department, while he is willing to place them at our command.”  All parties equally cried out against the falsehood, duplicity, and, in fact, avowed profligacy of Fouche.  “Fouche,” said Buonaparte, “and Fouche alone, is able to conduct the ministry of the police:  he alone has a perfect knowledge of all the factions and intrigues which have been spreading misery through France.  We cannot create men:  we must take such as we find; and it is easier to modify by circumstances the feelings and conduct of an able servant, than to supply his place.”  Thus did he systematically make use of whatever was willing to be useful—­counting on the ambition of one man, the integrity of a second, and the avarice of a third, with equal confidence; and justified, for the present time (which was all he was anxious about) by the results of each of the experiments in question.

It is impossible to refuse the praise of consummate prudence and skill to these, and indeed, to all the arrangements of Buonaparte, at this great crisis of his history.  The secret of his whole scheme is unfolded in his own memorable words to Sieyes:  “We are creating a new era,—­of the past we must forget the bad, and remember only the good.”  From the day when the consular government was formed, a new epoch was to date.  Submit to that government, and no man need fear that his former acts, far less opinions, should prove any obstacle to his security—­nay, to his advancement.  Henceforth the regicide might dismiss all dread of Bourbon revenge; the purchaser of forfeited property of being sacrificed to the returning nobles; provided only they chose to sink their theories and submit.  To the royalist, on the other hand, Buonaparte held out the prospect, not indeed of Bourbon restoration, but of the re-establishment of a monarchical form of government, and all the concomitants of a court; for the churchman the temples were at once opened; and the rebuilding of the hierarchical fabric, in all its wealth, splendour and power, was offered in prospective.  Meanwhile, the great and crying evil, from which the revolution had really sprung, was for ever abolished.  The odious distinction of castes was at an end.  Political liberty existed, perhaps, no longer; but civil liberty—­the equality of all Frenchmen in the eye of the law—­was, or seemed to be, established.  All men henceforth must contribute to the state in the proportion of their means:  all men appeal to the same tribunals; and no man, however meanly born, had it to say, that there was one post of power or dignity in France to which talent and labour never could elevate him.  Shortly after Napoleon took possession of the Tuileries, Murat, who had long been the lover of his sister Caroline, demanded her hand in marriage.  The gallantry and military talents of this handsome officer had already raised him to a distinguished rank in the army, and