Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IV. BONAPARTE AND THE PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE. President. Sire, while the car of Victory is awhile suspended in its course, and mothers are embracing those pledges of affection, which a frightful Revolution hath spared to their maternity, happy France is devising, under the auspices of her immortal hero, new pangs and afflictions for the tyrants of the ocean. The radiant star that shone upon your Majesty’s nativity, throws a lustre that eclipses the polar. It embellishes our soil, and renders it fruitful in all those resources of industry which will for ever keep it independent of distant and less happy climates. The beet-root, indigenous plant, satisfied all the wishes of a nation at once the most elegant and luxurious.
Frenchmen, I am contented with you, said her tutelary Genius:
yes, your Majesty said it. Suddenly a thousand voices cry, Let us make fresh sacrifices: we have wished; it is not enough; we will do more. Ardent to fulfil their duties, and waiting but to be instructed how, the brave youth, and those whose grey hairs are so honourable, implore that paternal wisdom which never will cease to watch over them, that they may receive those august commands which will accomplish their destinies. The enemy no longer pollutes our soil: France recovers her attitude. Your Majesty wishes no new provinces: greater triumphs, wider dominion, to the successor of Charlemagne and of Trajan ! That mighty mind, to bless a beloved and grateful people, shall make the animal kingdom confederate with the vegetable. Such are his conquests: the only ones that remain for him to achieve. From the calm of their retreats the sages of France step forth: andbehold the decree which your Majesty had already uttered at the bottom of their hearts. Bonaparte. Read it, and make ha…