[Pg 255]As soon as Napoleon's anger cooled he received Lafayette and Latour Maubourg, conversing affably, even jocularly about their imprisonment. "I don't know what the devil you did to the Austrians," he said, "but it cost them a mighty effort to let you go." For a time Lafayette saw the First Consul frequently and was on excellent terms with other members of his family. Lucien Bonaparte is said to have cherished the belief that Lafayette would not have objected to him as a son-in-law. But in character and principle Lafayette and the First Consul were too far apart to be really friends. It was to the interest of each to secure the good will of the other, and both appear honestly to have tried. The two have been said to typify the beginning and the end of the French Revolution: Lafayette, the generous, impractical theories of its first months: Napoleon, the strong will and strong hand needed to pull the country out of the anarchy into which these theories had degenerated. Lafayette was too much of an optimist and idealist not to speak his mind freely to the First Consul, even when asking favors for old friends. Napoleon was too practical not to resent lectures from a man whose theories had signally failed of success; and far too much of an autocrat to enjoy having his personal favors refused. The grand cross of the Legion of Honor, a seat in the French Senate at a time when it depended on the will of Napoleon and not on an election of the people, and the post of minister to the United States were refused in turn. Lafayette said he was more interested in agriculture than in [Pg 256]embassies, and made it plain that an office to which he was elected was the only kind he cared to hold. If Napoleon hoped to gain his support by appealing to his ambition, he failed utterly. Gradually their relations became strained and the break occurred in 1802 when Napoleon was declared Consul for life. Lafayette was now an elector for the Department of Seine and Marne, an office within the gift of the people, and as such had to vote on the proposal to make Bonaparte Consul for life. He cast his vote against it, inscribing on the register of his Commune: "I cannot vote for such a magistracy until public liberty is sufficiently guaranteed. Then I shall give my vote to Napoleon Bonaparte"; and he wrote him a letter carefully explaining that there was nothing personal in it. "That is quite true," says a French biographer. "A popular government, with Bonaparte at its head, would have suited Lafayette exactly."