His part in the work was interesting and important. After the laws had been well digested and arranged in preliminary bodies, they were submitted to the Council of State. It was in the discussion before this body that Napoleon took part. That a man of thirty-one, brought up as a soldier, and having no legal training, could follow the discussions of such a learned and serious body as Napoleon’s Council of State always was, seems incredible. In fact, he prepared for each session as thoroughly as the law-makers themselves. His habit was to talk over, beforehand generally with Cambacérès and Portalis, two legislators of great learning and clearness of judgment, all the matters which were to come up. “He examined each question by itself,” says Roederer, “inquiring into all the authorities, times, experiences; demanding to know how it had been under ancient jurisprudence, under Louis XIV., or Frederick the Great. When a bill was presented to the First Consul, he rarely failed to ask these questions: Is this bill complete? Does it cover every case? Why have you not thought of this? Is that necessary? Is it right or useful? What is done nowadays and elsewhere?” At night, after he had gone to bed, he would read or have read to him authorities on the subject. Such was his capacity for grasping any idea, that he would come to the Council with a perfectly clear notion of the subject to be treated, and a good idea of its historical development. Thus he could follow the most erudite and philosophical arguments, and could take part in them. He stripped them at once of all conventional phrases and learned terms, and stated clearly what they meant. He had no use for anything but the plain meaning. By thus going directly to the practical sense of a thing, he frequently cleared up the ideas of the revisers themselves. In framing the laws, he took care that they should be worded so that everybody could understand them. Thus, when a law relating to liquors was being prepared, he urged that _wholesale_ and _retail_ should be defined in such a way that they would be definite ideas to the people. “_Pot_ and _pint_ must be inserted,” he said. “There is no objection to those words. An excise act isn’t an epic poem.”