[Footnote 29: See in particular the memoirs of Miot de Melito, Pasquier, Ségur, Thiébault, Marmont, Lafayette, Savary, Rémusat, Rapp, Thibaudeau, and Bourrienne; the Souvenirs of Macdonald and Chaptal; and the Lettres inédites. Also, De Bausset: Cour de Napoléon; Masson: Josephine, Impératrice et Reine; Aulard: Révolution Française; Remacle: Relations secrètes des agents de Louis XVIII à Paris sous le Consulat.] Bonaparte's Principles -- His Comprehension of French Conditions -- Meaning of Enghien's Murder -- The Dynasties of Europe -- The Possibilities of Hereditary Power -- The New France -- Desire for a Dynasty -- Suggestions of Monarchy -- The Empire Proposed -- The New Constitution -- Imperial State -- The New Nobility -- Device of the Empire -- The New Court -- The Plebiscite. Step by step, laboriously and painfully, by guile and prudence, in the exercise of consummate genius as soldier and politician, Napoleon Bonaparte had now climbed to the pinnacle of revolutionary power. Insubordinate as a subaltern under a worn-out system, he found for his soaring ambition no fitting sphere in the country of his birth, the only fatherland he ever knew; and in that limited field he was both ineffectual as an agitator and unsuccessful as a revolutionary. But with keen insight he studied and apprehended the greater movement as it developed in France. Standing ever at the parting of the ways, and indifferent to principle, he carefully considered each path, and finally chose the one which seemed likeliest to guide his footsteps toward the goal of his ambition. Fertile in resources, he strove always to construct a double plan, and in the failure of one expedient passed easily to another. His career had been marked by many blunders, and he had often been brought to a stand on the verge of some abyss which threatened failure and ruin; yet, like the driver of a midnight train, he kept the headlight of caution trimmed and burning. Careless of the dangers abounding behind the walls of revolutionary darkness which hedged his track, he ever paused before those immediately confronting him, and sometimes retreated far to find a hazardless circuit. Brumaire was almost the only occasion of his larger life on which, unwary, he had come in full career upon an open chasm. Fate being propitious, he was saved. Lucien, with presence of mind, opened the throttle, and, by releasing the pent-up enthusiasm of the soldiers at the critical instant, safely drove the machine across a toppling bridge.