It was difficult to get officials for the post-office who could be relied on to intercept the proper letters; and in 1802, the Postmaster-General, Monsieur Bernard, the father of the beautiful Madame Récamier, was found to be concealing an active royalist correspondence, and to be permitting the circulation of a quantity of seditious pamphlets. His arrest and imprisonment made a great commotion in his daughter’s circle, which was one of social and intellectual importance. Through the intercessions of Bernadotte, Monsieur Bernard was pardoned by Napoleon. The _cabinet noir_, as the department of the post-office which did this work was called, was in existence when Napoleon came to the Consulate, and he rather restricted than increased its operations. It has never been entirely given up, as many an inoffensive foreigner in France can testify. The theatre and press were also subjected to a strict censorship. In 1800 the number of newspapers in Paris was reduced to twelve; and in three years there were but eight left, with a total subscription list of eighteen thousand six hundred and thirty. Napoleon’s contempt for journalists and editors equalled that he had for lawyers, whom he called a “heap of babblers and revolutionists.” Neither class could, in his judgment, be allowed to go free. [Illustration: “THE GENERAL OF THE GRAND ARMY.” This pencil portrait by David is nothing but a rapid sketch, but its iconographic interest is undeniable. David doubtless executed this design towards the end of 1797, after Bonaparte’s return from Italy. It belongs to Monsieur Cheramy, a Paris lawyer.—A. D.] The _salons_ were watched, and it is certain that those whose _habitués_ criticised Napoleon freely were reported. One serious rupture resulted from the supervision of the _salons_, that with Madame de Staël. She had been an ardent admirer of Napoleon in the beginning of the Consulate, and Bourrienne tells several amusing stories of the disgust Napoleon showed at the letters of admiration and sentiment which she wrote him even so far back as the Italian campaign. If the secretary is to be believed, Madame de Staël told Napoleon, in one of these letters, that they were certainly created for each other, that it was an error in human institutions that the mild and tranquil Josephine was united to his fate, that nature evidently had intended for a hero such as he, her own soul of fire. Napoleon tore the letter to pieces, and he took pains thereafter to announce with great bluntness to Madame de Staël, whenever he met her, his own notions of women, which certainly were anything but “modern.”