He told them that it was unworthy of a great Republic to triumph, year after year, in the shedding of an individual enemy's blood.

They answered by reminding him that the Athenians and Romans of old recorded, in similar festivals, the downfall of the Pisistratidae and the exile of the Tarquins.

He _might_ have replied, that it is easier for a nation to renounce Christianity in name, than to obliterate altogether the traces of its humanising influence.

But this view did not as yet occur to Napoleon--or if it had, could not have been promulgated to their conviction.

He stood on the impolicy of the barbarous ceremony; and was at length, with difficulty, persuaded to appear in it as a private member of the institute, along with the rest of that association.