In a candlelit council chamber at the Petit Luxembourg, three Consuls of France — Napoleon at center, his dark eyes fixed on a colleague — preside over the Installation of the Council of State, the administrative body Napoleon created in December 1799 to draft the laws of his new regime. Painted by Auguste Couder and preserved at the Musée de Versailles, this sepia photomechanical card captures an intimate moment of governance: the sword still at Napoleon's hip, the quill and inkwell on the table before them, a young aide seated at lower right. The scene dates to the Consulate period, when Napoleon was still "First Consul" rather than Emperor — a brief, electric interlude when the machinery of modern French law was being invented in rooms exactly like this one. The LL-series divided-back reverse is pristine and unwritten, published by Lévy et Neurdein Réunis at their Paris atelier.