In VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893.

Vol I.
chap.IX.and X.pp.

225-268.

(Admirable portraiture of his principal agents, Cambaceres, Talleyrand, Maret, Cretet, Real, etc.) Lacuee, director of the conscription, is a perfect type of the imperial functionary.

Having received the broad ribbon of the Legion d'Honneur, he exclaimed, at the height of his enthusiasm: "what will not France become under such a man?
To what degree of happiness and glory will it not ascend, always provided the conscription furnishes him with 200,000 men a year! And, indeed, that will not be difficult, considering the extent of the empire."-- And likewise with Merlin de Douai: "I never knew a man less endowed with the sentiment of the just and the unjust; everything seems to him right and good, as the consequences of a legal text.