The men and measures worked well. A treasury absolutely depleted was
slowly replenished by the practice of simple honesty; a disintegrated
military force was cautiously reassembled and brought into order, but
the garrison of Paris was not enlarged above nine thousand men, and
there was no show of force. The Bonaparte family moved into the
Luxembourg, but its head appeared always in civilian garb. He was much
abroad, visiting and conversing with men of science, letters, and
finance. Thoroughly restored in balance of mind, he did and said kind
things, joking about the scenes of St. Cloud, and explaining away the
unhappy words he had uttered. His sayings were repeated far and near,
and within a few days there were throngs of influential visitors in
his parlors. It may well be believed that shrewd observers noted his
appearance and manners, his hollow cheeks, pale face, stern brow; his
insatiate, all-embracing curiosity, keen questionings, and tactful
rejoinders, the irresistible magnetism of his vigor, his mind, and
his youth. The family connections were not in evidence; Lucien
especially was kept in the background. There were no oracular
statements, no boastful professions, yet every one felt profoundly
that the consuls were a force, an active force, saying little, toiling
to exhaustion, and that results of importance would emerge in due
time. Indeed the ameliorations of administration were in evidence from
the very first.
The industry of Sieyès and Bonaparte was indeed unexampled. There was
friction, but one was indispensable to the other; they must work
together, and the supple Talleyrand was then to keep the peace.
Sieyès's "perfect" constitution propounded a singularly cumbersome
plan of government, but it contained much that was Bonaparte's own,
and therefore suited to Bonaparte's purposes. It was accordingly taken
as a starting-point. In the end, the document actually adopted and
promulgated proved to be outwardly similar but inwardly antipodal to
that of Sieyès. While skilfully blinding all classes to its
possibilities as an instrument for controlling the nation by a central
power, its provisions were perfectly adapted to conciliate every
faction except that of the Jacobins, who were by flight or conversion
to all intents annihilated. Sixty-two members of the Five Hundred were
deposed. The rest, as a reward for their late complacency, were
invited in the name of the public welfare to accept office as foreign
ministers, or diplomatic agents, and, in some cases, as government
representatives in the provinces; their position as delegates was not
to be jeopardized by acceptance. The purpose of this was to remove the
majority of the old republican politicians from Paris, under the guise
of compensating them for past service. Sieyès's great fundamental
notion was to secure the form of popular representation without its
substance,--"confidence coming from below," as he expressed it, "power