If they were capable, if they were honest, it did not matter to Napoleon whether they had voted to kill the King or to save him; he put them to work for France. Once in office, they must work. No sinecures, no salaries paid as hush money, or indirect bribe, or pension for past service, or screen for the privileged; without exception all must earn their wages. “Come, gentlemen!” Napoleon would say cheerfully to counsellors of State who had already been hammering away for ten or twelve hours, “Come, gentlemen, it is only two o’clock! Let us get on to something else; we must earn the money the State pays us.” He himself labored from twelve to eighteen hours each day, and his activity ran the whole gamut of public work,--from the inspection of the soldier’s outfit, the planning of roads, bridges, quays, monuments, churches, public buildings, the selection of a sub-prefect, the choice of a statue for the palace, the review of a regiment, the dictation of a despatch, or the details of a tax-digest, to the grand outlines of organic law, national policy, and the movements of all the armies of the Republic. Under the Directory, the military administration had broken down so completely that the war office had lost touch with the army. Soldiers were not fed, clothed, or paid by the State. They could subsist only by plundering friends and foes alike. Frightful ravages were committed by civil and military agents of the French Republic in Italy, Switzerland, and along the German frontier. When Napoleon applied to the late minister of war, Dubois de Crancé, for information about the army, he could get none. Special couriers had to be sent to the various commands to obtain the most necessary reports. Under such mismanagement, desertions had become frequent in the army, and recruiting had almost ceased. The old patriotic enthusiasm had disappeared; the “Marseillaise” performed at the theatres, by order of the Directory, was received with hoots. To breathe new life into Frenchmen, to inspire them again with confidence, hope, enthusiasm, was the great task of the new government. The Jacobin was to be made to tolerate the royalist, the Girondin, the Feuillant, and the priest. Each of these in turn must be made to tolerate each other and the Jacobin. The noble must consent to live quietly within the Republic which had confiscated his property, and by the side of the man who now owned it. The republican must dwell in harmony with the emigrant aristocracy which had once trodden him to the earth, and which had leagued all Europe against France in the efforts to restore old abuses. In the equality created by law, the democrat must grow accustomed to the sight of nobles and churchmen in office; and the man of the highest birth must be content to work with a colleague whose birth was of the lowest. Ever since the Revolution began, there had been alternate massacres of Catholics by revolutionists, and of revolutionists by Catholics. It is impossible