But however free from the wish to obtain wealth by any indirect means, Napoleon appears to have expected, that in return for public services of such an unusual magnitude, some provision ought to have been made for him. An attempt was made to procure a public grant of the domain of Chambord, and a large hotel in Paris, as an acknowledgment of the national gratitude for his brilliant successes; but the Directory thwarted the proposal. [Sidenote: Nov. 5.] The proposition respecting Chambord was not the only one of the kind. Malibran, a member of the Council of Five Hundred, made a motion that Buonaparte should be endowed with a revenue at the public charge, of fifty thousand livres annually, with a reversion to his wife of one half of that sum.[335] It may be supposed that this motion had not been sufficiently considered and preconcerted, since it was very indifferently received, and was evaded by the swaggering declaration of a member,[336] that such glorious deeds could not be rewarded by gold. So that the Assembly adopted the reasonable principle, that because the debt of gratitude was too great to be paid in money, therefore he to whom it was due was to be suffered to remain in comparative indigence--an economical mode of calculation, and not unlike that high-sounding doctrine of the civil law, which states, that a free man being seized on, and forcibly sold for a slave, shall obtain no damages on that account, because the liberty of a citizen is too transcendently valuable to be put to estimation. Whatever might be the motives of the Directory; whether they hoped that poverty might depress Buonaparte's ambition, render him more dependent on the government, and oblige him to remain in a private condition for want of means to put himself at the head of a party; or whether they acted with the indistinct and confused motives of little minds, who wish to injure those whom they fear, their conduct was alike ungracious and impolitic. They ought to have calculated, that a generous mind would have been attached by benefits, and that a selfish one might have been deterred from more doubtful and ambitious projects, by a prospect of sure and direct advantage; but that marked ill-will and distrust must in every case render him dangerous, who has the power to be so. Their plan, instead of resting on an attempt to conciliate the ambitious conqueror, and soothe him to the repose of a tranquil indulgence of independence and ease, seems to have been that of devising for him new labours, like the wife of Eurystheus for the juvenile Hercules. If he succeeded, they may have privately counted upon securing the advantages for themselves; if he failed, they were rid of a troublesome rival in the race of power and popularity. It was with these views that they proposed to Napoleon to crown his military glories, by assuming the command of the preparations made for the conquest of England. FOOTNOTES: