The general, on meeting the thinker at Gohier’s house, studiously ignored him.  In truth, he was at first disposed to oust both Sieyes and Barras from the Directory.  The latter of these men was odious to him for reasons both private and public.  In time past he had had good reasons for suspecting Josephine’s relations with the voluptuous Director, and with the men whom she met at his house.  During the Egyptian campaign his jealousy had been fiercely roused in another quarter, and, as we have seen, led to an almost open breach with his wife.  But against Barras he still harboured strong suspicions; and the frequency of his visits to the Director’s house after returning from Egypt was doubtless due to his desire to sound the depths of his private as well as of his public immorality.  If we may credit the embarras de mensonges which has been dignified by the name of Barras’ “Memoirs,” Josephine once fled to his house and flung herself at his knees, begging to be taken away from her husband; but the story is exploded by the moral which the relator clumsily tacks on, as to the good advice which he gave her.[126] While Bonaparte seems to have found no grounds for suspecting Barras on this score, he yet discovered his intrigues with various malcontents; and he saw that Barras, holding the balance of power in the Directory between the opposing pairs of colleagues, was intriguing to get the highest possible price for the betrayal of the Directory and of the constitution of 1795.

For Sieyes the general felt dislike but respect.  He soon saw the advantage of an alliance with so learned a thinker, so skilful an intriguer, and so weak a man.  It was, indeed, necessary; for, after making vain overtures to Gohier for the alteration of the law which excluded from the Directory men of less than forty years of age, the general needed the alliance of Sieyes for the overthrow of the constitution.  In a short space he gathered around him the malcontents whom the frequent crises had deprived of office, Roederer, Admiral Bruix, Real, Cambaceres, and, above all, Talleyrand.  The last-named; already known for his skill in diplomacy, had special reasons for favouring the alliance of Bonaparte and Sieyes:  he had been dismissed from the Foreign Office in the previous month of July because in his hands it had proved to be too lucrative to the holder and too expensive for France.  It was an open secret that, when American commissioners arrived in Paris a short time previously, for the settlement of various disputes between the two countries, they found that the negotiations would not progress until 250,000 dollars had changed hands.  The result was that hostilities continued, and that Talleyrand soon found himself deprived of office, until another turn of the revolutionary kaleidoscope should restore him to his coveted place.[127] He discerned in the Bonaparte-Sieyes combination the force that would give the requisite tilt now that Moreau gave up politics.