The
three millions granted by the National Assembly were rioted away; the
Treasury had to be refilled somehow or another. In vain did Bonaparte
open a national subscription, at the head of which he himself figured
with a large sum, for the establishment of so-called "cites ouvrieres."
[#3 Work cities.] The hard-hearted bourgeois waited, distrustful, for
the payment of his own shares; and, as this, of course, never took
place, the speculation in Socialist castles in the air fell flat. The
gold bars drew better. Bonaparte and his associates did not content
themselves with putting into their own pockets part of the surplus of
the seven millions over and above the bars that were to be drawn; they
manufactured false tickets; they sold, of Number 10 alone, fifteen to
twenty lots--a financial operation fully in the spirit of the "Society
of December 10"! The National Assembly did not here have before it the
fictitious President of the Republic, but Bonaparte himself in flesh
and blood. Here it could catch him in the act, not in conflict with
the Constitution, but with the penal code.
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