Establishment of the First Empire.
Reluctance of the French Government to publish a record of the
expedition.
Report of the Institute.
The official history of the voyage authorised.
Peron's scientific work.
His discovery of Pyrosoma atlanticum.
Other scientific memoirs.
His views on the modification of species.
Geographical results.
Freycinet's charts.
Startling changes in the political complexion of France had occurred
during the absence of the expedition. Citizen Bonaparte, who in May 1800
had concurred in the representations of the Institute that discovery in
southern regions would redound to the glory of the nation, had since
given rein to the conception that the glory of France meant, properly
interpreted, his own.* (* It was so from the beginning of his career as
Consul, according to M. Paul Brosses' interpretation of his character.
"Il est deja et sera de plus en plus convaincu que travailler a sa
grandeur, c'est travailler a la grandeur du pays." Consulat et Empire,
1907 page 27.) He meant to found a dynasty, and woe to those whom he
regarded as standing in his way. One of the first pieces of news that
those who landed from Le Geographe at Lorient on the 25th March would
hear, was that just four days before, the Duc d'Enghien, son of the Duc
de Bourbon, had been shot after an official examination so formal as to
be no better than a mockery, for his grave had actually been dug before
the inquiry commenced. When Peron and his companions reached Paris, they
would hear and read of debates among the representatives of the Republic,
mostly favourable to the establishment of a new hereditary Imperial
dignity; and they would be in good time to take an interest in the
plebiscite which, by a majority of nearly fourteen hundred to one,
approved the new constitution and enacted that "Napoleon Bonaparte, now
First Consul of the Republic, is Emperor of the French." They were, in
short, back soon enough to witness the process - it may well have
suggested to the naturalist a comparison with phenomena very familiar to
him - by which the Consular-chrysalis Bonaparte became the Emperor-moth
Napoleon.
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