In "L'Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem" he is compelled to cut out "a good deal of declamation on courts, courtiers and certain features calculated to excite misplaced allusions." The censorship interdicts the "Dernier des Abencerrages," where" it finds too warm an interest in the Spanish cause." One must read the entire register to see it at work and in detail, to feel the sinister and grotesque minutia with which it pursues and destroys, not alone among great or petty writers but, again, among compilers and insignificant abbreviators, in a translation, in a dictionary, in a manual, in an almanac, not only ideas but suggestions, echoes, semblances and oversights in thinking, the possibilities of awakening reflection and comparison: * every souvenir of the ancient regime, this or that mention of Kleber or Moreau, or a particular conversation of Sully and Henry IV.; * "a game of loto,[6259] which familiarizes youth with the history of their country," but which says too much about "the family of the grand-dauphin of Louis XVI.

and his aunts"; * the general work of the reveries of Cagliostro and of M.Henri de Saint-Mesmin, very laudatory of the Emperor, excellent "for filling the soul of Frenchmen with his presence, but which must leave out three awkward comparisons that might be detected by the malevolent or the foolish;" * the "translation into French verse of several of David's psalms," which are not dangerous in Latin but which, in French, have the defect of a possible application, through coincidence and prophecy, to the Church as suffering, and to religion as persecuted; and quantities of other literary insects hatched in the depths of publication, nearly all ephemeral, crawling and imperceptible, but which the censor, through zeal and his trade, considers as fearsome dragons whose heads must be smashed or their teeth extracted.
After the next brood they prove inoffensive, and, better still, are useful, especially the almanacs,[6260] "in rectifying on various points the people's attitudes.

It will probably be possible after 1812 to control their composition, and they are filled with anecdotes, songs and stories adapted to the maintenance of patriotism and of devotion to the sacred person of His Majesty and to the Napoleonic dynasty."-- To this end, the police likewise improves, orders and pays for dramatic or lyric productions of all kinds, cantatas, ballets, impromptus, vaudevilles, comedies, grand-operas, comic operas, a hundred and seventy-six works in one day, composed for the birth of the King of Rome and paid for in rewards to the sum of 88,400 francs.

Let the administration look to this beforehand so as to raise up talent and have it bear good fruit.
"Complaints are made because we have no literature;[6261] it is the fault of the minister of the interior.

Napoleon personally and in the height of a campaign interposes in theatrical matters.