With the abrupt, determined tones which he assumed more and more on reaching absolute power, he one day said to Chaptal at Malmaison: "I intend to make Paris the most beautiful capital of the world: I wish that in ten years it should number two millions of inhabitants." "But," replied his Minister of the Interior, "one cannot improvise population; ...

as it is, Paris would scarcely support one million"; and he instanced the want of good drinking water.

"What are your plans for giving water to Paris ?" Chaptal gave two alternatives--artesian wells or the bringing of water from the River Ourcq to Paris.

"I adopt the latter plan: go home and order five hundred men to set to work to-morrow at La Villette to dig the canal." Such was the inception of a great public work which cost more than half a million sterling.

The provisioning of Paris also received careful attention, a large reserve of wheat being always kept on hand for the satisfaction of "a populace which is only dangerous when it is hungry." Bonaparte therefore insisted on corn being stored and sold in large quantities and at a very low price, even when considerable loss was thereby entailed.[176] But besides supplying _panem_ he also provided _circenses_ to an extent never known even in the days of Louis XV.