Towards the close of March Talleyrand presented himself to Napoleon one morning for the usual discussion of business. When it was all over he calmly produced the Treaty of Amiens! But he was far from insensible of the height to which France had risen since the end of 1799. The flood of allied armies that had dashed against her frontiers for seven or eight years had now ebbed impotently away. Her territory reached to more natural boundaries, and her influence was felt far beyond them—in Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Spain. There seemed some hope at last of that internal organisation which France so sorely needed. And Bonaparte’s ideal went very largely on the lines of Talleyrand’s own schemes. His great address on education was exhumed; his financial proposals were followed more than once in the restoration of fiscal health to the country. Nor would Talleyrand have any sympathy with the opposition to Napoleon’s creation of the Legion of Honour. “Toys!” said Napoleon, when someone spoke lightly of his distribution of ribands: “Well, you keep men in order with toys.” It was a not unhappy mean between the old hereditary gradation of society, with its demoralising and irritating narrowness, and the crude “equality” of the Revolution. When, therefore, the proposal of a life Consulship was put before Paris by Napoleon’s instruments, Talleyrand had no reason to demur to it. The benevolent despot was his ideal of government for France. Besides, who _could_ succeed Napoleon? Who else could give form and substance to the fair vision of France that had arisen before the minds of thoughtful men? To talk of Talleyrand “deserting” the principles of the Revolution which he had embraced is mere verbiage. He had never believed that pure democracy would be permanent or practicable in an uneducated nation. There did not seem to him on that account any reason why he should sit idly beyond the frontiers, living on an English pension, until others would lead France again into the paths of destiny. So when Cambacérès hinted that the work of the First Consul merited a peculiar recognition, he felt no repugnance. The obsequious Senate proposed a Consulship for ten years, and Napoleon disdainfully ignored it. Then the idea of a life-Consulship was put to the country in a plebiscite, and carried by an imposing majority.