On Christmas Eve, 1800, the Consul was driving to the opera. Josephine and her daughter were following in another carriage. In a narrow street an empty cart partially blocked the way, and caused a halt. The cart was pushed aside, and the coachman whipped up his horses. The instant after the carriage had passed, an infernal machine hidden in the cart exploded. About twenty persons were killed, but no one in either Napoleon’s or Josephine’s carriage was hurt. On reaching the opera, Napoleon went straight to his box. When his wife arrived, he said calmly: “Josephine, those rascals wanted to blow me up; send for a copy of the music.” Outwardly unmoved, he listened to the performance of Haydn’s recent work, _Creation_.

Ordinarily, good music made him forget all his schemes; but this evening his brain was busily at work, pondering the causes and foreseeing the consequences of the attempt on his life. It mattered little who “the rascals” were, revolutionaries of the left or revolutionaries of the right. He knew well enough that he had plenty of enemies on both sides. The question was, whether it would suit him best to assume that his would-be assassins belonged to the right or to the left. His mind was soon made up on this point. Had the attempt been successful, the consequences for France would have been immeasurably great. Well, the consequences of the unsuccessful attempt should be no less momentous. It was a lucky chance, and he would make it solve the problem of personal power.

Next morning, when people came to offer congratulations on his escape, and when all were agreed in the opinion that the outrage must have been planned by the royalists, with assumed heat Napoleon declared they were absolutely mistaken. “This was the work of Septembrists, intellectuals, the non-commissioned officers of the revolution—persons with a bolder imagination and more culture than the masses, but in close touch with them, and always ready to spur on the workers!” When, in the Council of State, a proposal was made to institute special proceedings, Bonaparte objected on the ground that the method would be too slow. His speech was impassioned:

“Either we must do nothing at all, and, like Augustus, forgive the sinners; or else we must act promptly, take far-reaching steps which will guarantee social order once for all.... No ordinary criminal procedure will suffice; this is a matter for statesmanship.... Blood must flow. As many of the guilty must be shot as there perished innocent persons in the streets. Two hundred of these raging wolves must be seized and transported. They are always watching and waiting for their prey. All our troubles are due to these metaphysicians!”

Old Tronchet shakes his head. The attempt had been the work of émigrés and Englishmen.

“Are you proposing that I should transport noblemen or priests?” asked Napoleon angrily. “Vendée is quiet, and I do not want to banish the servants of the most widely spread religion in the world. I shall have to dismiss all the members of the Council of State, for, with two or three exceptions, every one of you believes in this fable of a royalist plot.... Do you think me a child? Am I to say that the country is in danger? Has France ever been in better case since the revolution, the army more victorious, the country more peaceful? A pretty thing that men who have never been among the true friends of liberty, should now display so much concern for liberty! Do not think to excuse yourselves by saying: ‘I defended the patriots in the Council of State.’ That might go down in a drawing-room, but it will not go down here, among the most enlightened men in France!” He abruptly closes the sitting. Do the councillors understand his drift?

These alarums and excursions are not the outcome of any sense of personal danger, for if that were his motive, if his own alarmed will-to-live were at work, he would seek out the real offenders as object for vengeance. The whole scene was statecraft. Whom can we frighten here at home? Whom can we pacify across the frontier? That is what the Consul is asking himself. Those are the considerations that guide his actions. Of course, there is a personal motive as well. He thinks that his own safety can best be guarded by draconian measures. “I did not sleep well o’ nights,” he said at a later date, “until I had had these leaders of the great towns sent across the seas. I was not afraid of the sort of conspirator who gets up at nine o’clock in the morning and puts on a clean shirt!”

At the same time, he is infuriated by an anonymous pamphlet, “Cæsar, Cromwell, and Bonaparte,” in which the writer advocates the establishment of a hereditary monarchy. Who is daring to disclose his own secret thoughts, even though the indiscreet pamphleteer is a sympathiser? When one of his confidants says that the only thing wrong with the pamphlet is that the disclosure is premature, Bonaparte lets the observation pass. But these two attempts, the attack on his body and the attack on his mind, have terrible consequences as far as freedom is concerned. The Tribunate and the Chambers are purged of a fifth of their numbers, Constant, Chénier, and other noted democrats being excluded; sixty-one out of seventy-three newspapers are suppressed; pamphlets and plays are subjected to a censorship. When the Council of State reminds him of the freedom of the press, he answers: “Do you think that, in such a situation, we can allow public meetings?... And is not every journalist an orator? Do not the subscribers to his newspaper really form a club? Calumny is like an oil spot, which always leaves traces.... In England it is different; there the Government is old-established; here it is new. People would write worse things about me day by day; saying, for instance, that I am so afraid of being poisoned that I dare not eat!... The only way of keeping the political parties in check is to deprive them of their battle-ground.”

Sound reasoning, appropriate measures. But the spirit of free thought stands weeping at the door; her fascinated gaze is fixed upon power enthroned.