But of the new code we shall have occasion to speak hereafter.
Buonaparte at this period devised, and began to put into execution, innumerable public works of the highest utility.

The inland navigation of Languedoc was to be made complete: a great canal between the Yonne and the Saonne was begun, for the purpose of creating a perfect water communication quite across the republican dominion--from Marseilles to Amsterdam.

Numberless bridges, roads, museums, were planned; and the vain were flattered with rising monuments of magnificence, while the wise recognised in every such display the depths and forecast of a genius made for empire.
Thus far the measures of the Consulate may be said to have carried with them the approbation of all but a few individuals.

They were accompanied or followed by proceedings, some of which roused, or strengthened and confirmed, sentiments of a very different description among various important classes of the French community; while others were well calculated to revive the suspicion of all the neighbouring nations.
It is said that the first idea of the Legion of Honour arose in the breast of Napoleon on witnessing one day, from a window at the Tuileries, the admiration with which the crowd before the palace regarded the stars and crosses worn by the Marquis Lucchesini, ambassador of Prussia, as he descended from his carriage.

The republican members of the senate could not be persuaded that the institution of an order, with insignia, was anything but the first step to the creation of a new body of nobility; and they resisted the proposed measure with considerable pertinacity.