There it was subjected to the scrutiny of several experts, but, above all, to Bonaparte himself.

He presided at more than half of the 102 sittings devoted to this criticism; and sittings of eight or nine hours were scarcely long enough to satisfy his eager curiosity, his relentless activity, and his determined practicality.
From the notes of Thibaudeau one of the members of this revising committee, we catch a glimpse of the part there played by the First Consul.

We see him listening intently to the discussions of the jurists, taking up and sorting the threads of thought when a tangle seemed imminent, and presenting the result in some striking pattern.
We watch his methodizing spirit at work on the cumbrous legal phraseology, hammering it out into clear, ductile French.

We feel the unerring sagacity, which acted as a political and social touchstone, testing, approving, or rejecting multifarious details drawn from old French law or from the customs of the Revolution; and finally we wonder at the architectural skill which worked the 2,281 articles of the Code into an almost unassailable pile.

To the skill and patience of the three chief redactors that result is, of course, very largely due: yet, in its mingling of strength, simplicity, and symmetry, we may discern the projection of Napoleon's genius over what had hitherto been a legal chaos.
Some blocks of the pyramid were almost entirely his own.