This mixture of anger against and attraction for me displayed by Bonaparte is constant and strange: but now he threatens, and suddenly he asks the Institute why it has not mentioned me on the occasion of the decennial prizes. He goes further, he declares to Fontanes that, since the Institute does not think me worthy to compete for the prizes, he will give me one, that he will appoint me superintendent-general of all the libraries of France: a superintendence with the salary attached to a first-class embassy. Bonaparte's original idea of employing me in a diplomatic career did not leave him: he would not admit, for a reason well known to himself, that I had ceased to form part of the Ministry of External Relations. And yet, in spite of this proposed munificence, his Prefect of Police invited me, some time later[81], to remove myself from Paris, and I went to continue my Memoirs at Dieppe. Bonaparte stooped to play the part of a teasing school-boy; he disinterred the _Essai sur les Révolutions_ and delighted in the war which he brought down upon me on this subject. A certain M. Damaze de Raymond constituted himself my champion[82]: I went to thank him in the Rue Vivienne. He had a death's-head on his mantel-piece among his knick-knacks; some time later he was killed in a duel[83], and his charming features went to join the frightful face that seemed to call to him. Everyone fought in those days: one of the police-spies charged with the arrest of Georges received a bullet in the head from him.