Jurisprudence; The Code; Merlin, &C.—Monuments in Egypt.—Plan of an Egyptian Temple in Paris

3d. After breakfast, the Emperor took two or three turns in the garden. We were all with him. He spoke of the communications which the Governor had to make to us, and took a review of the different conjectures—some good, some bad—which each of us formed on the subject. The weather was tolerable; he ordered the calash, and we went round the wood. The heat and the heaviness of the atmosphere, though the sun was obscured, obliged him to go into the house again. He sat down and dictated to my son until five o’clock.

We again tried to take a few turns in the garden; but the air was cold and damp. He went in-doors again, and made me go to converse with him. He turned over an English book, and stopped at a part relating to jurisprudence, and the criminal codes of France and England, endeavouring to compare them. Every body knows how extremely well versed he is in our codes; but he has little knowledge of that of England, and, with the exception of some general points, I could not answer his questions. In the course of the conversation he said: Laws which in theory are a model of clearness become too often a chaos in their application; because men, with their passions, spoil every thing they touch, &c.... Men can only avoid being exposed to the arbitrary acts of the judge, by submitting to the despotism of the law, &c.... I had at first fancied it would be possible to reduce all laws to simple geometrical demonstrations; so that every man who could read, and connect two ideas together, would be able to decide for himself; but I became convinced, almost immediately that this idea was absurd. However,” added he, “I should have wished to start from some fixed point, and follow one road known to all; to have no other laws but those inserted in the code; and to proclaim, once for all, that all laws which were not in the code were null and void. But it is not easy to obtain simplicity from practical lawyers: they first prove to you that simplicity is impossible, that it is a mere chimera; and endeavour next to demonstrate that it is incompatible with the stability and the existence of power. Power, they say, is exposed alone to the unforeseen machinations of all: it must therefore have, in the moment of need, arms kept in reserve for such cases: so that, with some old edicts of Chilperic or Pharamond, ferreted out for the occasion,” said Napoleon, “nobody can say that he is secure from being hanged in due form and according to law.

“So long as the subjects of discussion in the Council of State,” said the Emperor, “were referable to the code, I felt very strong; but when they diverged from it, I was quite in the dark, and Merlin was then my resource—he was my light. Without possessing much brilliancy, Merlin is very learned, wise, upright, and honest; one of the veterans of the good old cause: he was very much attached to me.

“No sooner had the code made its appearance, than it was almost immediately followed by commentaries, explanations, elucidations, interpretations, and the Lord knows what besides. I usually exclaimed, on seeing this: Gentlemen, we have cleaned the stable of Augeas; for God’s sake do not let us fill it again!” &c.

During dinner, the Emperor made some very remarkable observations respecting Egypt, which will be found in the chapters dictated to Bertrand. He then reverted to his expedition to Syria, and declared that the grand object of the expedition to Egypt was to shake the power of England in the four quarters of the world, by effecting a revolution capable of changing the whole face of the East, and giving a new destiny to India. Egypt, he said, was to stand us in stead of St. Domingo, and our American Colonies, to reconcile the liberty of the blacks with the prosperity of our commerce. This new colony would have ruined the English in America, in the Mediterranean, and even on the banks of the Ganges.

Then, answering the reproach preferred against him of having deserted his army, he said: “I merely obeyed the call of France, which summoned me to save her, and I had a right to do so. I had received from the Directory a carte blanche for all my operations in the basin of the Mediterranean, in Africa, and in Asia. I had full powers for treating with the Russians, the Turks, the Barbary States, and the provinces of India. I was at liberty to appoint a successor, to bring back the army, or to return myself, if I thought proper.”

The Emperor thought that all he had seen in Egypt, and, particularly, all those celebrated ruins so much talked of, were not to be compared with Paris and the Tuileries. The only difference between Egypt and us was, in his opinion, that Egypt, thanks to the pureness of its air and the nature of its materials, preserved her ruins for ever; whereas the nature of our European atmosphere would not admit of our having any for any length of time, every thing being soon corroded and gone.

Vestiges of a thousand years’ date might be found on the banks of the Nile; but not one would subsist on the banks of the Seine in fifty years. He, however, regretted very much that he had not caused an Egyptian temple to be erected at Paris: he could have wished to adorn the capital with such a monument, &c.