The following is an instance in support of Pasquier’s statement regarding favours. When the Emperor was deeply engrossed in the Austrian campaign of 1809, one of his servants, named Fischer, went out of his mind. His master refused to fill his post, and paid the poor fellow, who had to be put in an asylum, his full salary of 12,000 francs a year until the end of 1812, when Napoleon gave him an annual pension of 6000 francs. Such kindness on the part of the man who might well be pardoned for forgetting or overlooking some claim, real or fancied, on his good-will was not rare but common.
Napoleon soon settled down to work, forsaking the hubbub of war for the quietness of the study. He established the University of France, which included every school both large and small, the primary object being to train the children in patriotism. In a word, he sought to dominate the mind. “There will never be fixity in politics,” the Emperor averred, “if there is not a teaching body with fixed principles. As long as people do not from their infancy learn whether they ought to be republicans or monarchists, Catholics or sceptics, the State will never form a nation: it will rest on unsafe and shifting foundations, always exposed to changes and disorders.” The first effort of the Council of the University was to compile the “Imperial Catechism,” one of the articles of the Napoleonic faith being that “Christians owe to the princes who govern them, and we in particular owe to Napoleon I., our Emperor, love, respect, obedience, fidelity, military service, and the taxes levied for the preservation and defence of the Empire and of his throne. We also owe him fervent prayers for his safety and for the spiritual and temporal prosperity of the State.”
The founder took the greatest possible interest in the work of the University, delighting to pay surprise visits to the schools. On one occasion he was somewhat nonplussed by a girl of whom he had asked the question: “How many needlesful of thread does it take to make a shirt?” “Sire,” she replied, “I should need but one, if I could have that sufficiently long.” The Emperor gave the witty scholar a gold chain as a reward.