It is not my purpose to say much about the laws, decrees, and 'Senatus-Consultes', which the First Consul either passed, or caused to be passed, after his accession to power, what were they all, with the exception of the Civil Code? The legislative reveries of the different men who have from time to time ruled France form an immense labyrinth, in which chicanery bewilders reason and common sense; and they would long since have been buried in oblivion had they not occasionally served to authorise injustice. I cannot, however, pass over unnoticed the happy effect produced in Paris, and throughout the whole of France, by some of the first decisions of the Consuls. Perhaps none but those who witnessed the state of society during the reign of Terror can fully appreciate the satisfaction which the first steps towards the restoration of social order produced in the breasts of all honest men. The Directory, more base and not less perverse than the Convention, had retained the horrible 21st of January among the festivals of the Republic. One of Bonaparte's first ideas on attaining the possession of power was to abolish this; but such was the ascendency of the abettors of the fearful event that he could not venture on a straightforward course. He and his two colleagues, who were Sieyes and Roger Ducos, signed, on the 5th Nivose, a decree, setting forth that in future the only festivals to be celebrated by the Republic were the 1st Vendemiaire and the 14th of July, intending by this means to consecrate provisionally the recollection of the foundation of the Republic and of liberty. All was calculation with Bonaparte. To produce effect was his highest gratification. Thus he let slip no opportunity of saying or doing things which were calculated to dazzle the multitude. While at the Luxembourg, he went sometimes accompanied by his 'aides de camp' and sometimes by a Minister, to pay certain official visits. I did not accompany him on these occasions; but almost always either on his return, after dinner, or in the evening, he related to me what he had done and said. He congratulated himself on having paid a visit to Daubenton, at the Jardin des Plantes, and talked with great self-complacency of the distinguished way in which he had treated the contemporary of Buffon.