The Consulate is the period of Bonaparte's greatest and most enduring renown. In what he did the new France was heartily sympathetic; the old France, with all its vices, spite, and bitterness, though existent, was in abeyance, and remained so for some years to come. The multitudinous memoirs concerning the time were for the most part written in the days of the Restoration, when the revulsion of feeling created a passion for the basest defamation, and unduly magnified the small defects of etiquette, behavior, and dress in the preceding régime. The scraps of evidence which these writings afford ought to be carefully examined, and viewed from the standpoint of the circumstances which produced them. Such a task being well-nigh hopeless, the deeds of the First Consul must speak for him rather than the statements about them and him which he himself and others have made. He was not in touch with the polite society of Paris; he certainly did most arbitrarily banish from its precincts Mme. de Staël, the brilliant woman whose writings many praise but few now read, and whose home was the focus for the discontented ability of the time; he never appreciated the spirit of true liberty, and he often misapprehended the gentler spirits who in its name sought his powerful protection and patronage; he was not sensitive to the finer sentiments of the mind, often mocking at the "ideologues"; and while he enjoyed the society of Josephine and her friends, he repelled their interference with his plans, and apparently never forgot that her jealous devotion had grown with his power and reputation. All this must be admitted in characterizing Bonaparte at the height of his greatness; but the vile innuendos, insinuations, and imputations of sordid traits, which so abound in the diaries of the time, must be considered in relation to the murky natures of those who recorded them, and, with allowances for the time and the training of the man, may be consigned to the limbo of malice from which they came.
Exile had broken the spirit but had neither softened the hearts nor enlightened the minds of the long-banished aristocracy and their friends. The new society looked on the thousands and thousands of returned emigrants with some pity and much indifference as they wandered about Paris and the other cities in faded, worn, old-fashioned garb. Their abodes were in garrets and cellars, their ancient titles were carefully concealed; the few who were recognized and betrayed by some vindictive spy were persecuted by legal tricks even to death, and the rest were cowed. Their cowardly precipitate flight had saved their lives, but it had destroyed their king, their honor, and their self-respect. Artois at Turin, Condé at Worms, the petty nobles at Coblentz, the great ones at Brussels, the clergy in England with their adherents, grandees and gentlemen; each of these groups had suffered in a different way from the rest, but all had finally found themselves objects of suspicion to their hosts, and had long since been reduced to an ignoble poverty. The employment in foreign armies for which they had hoped was so guardedly measured to them that their services were inappreciably small. They had been driven for support to teaching and other such noble employments as they could secure, then by a sure descent many became artisans, craftsmen, and even menials, but, failing that, they were frequently reduced to base mendicity, holding their hands for the alms which their sad appearance and murmured pleas drew from the passers-by. This was particularly the case at Hamburg, where twenty-five thousand took refuge, and at Erlangen in Bavaria. But they had scattered everywhere and had been a byword in all Europe.