The Five Directors had in truth done everything to undermine their own authority.  They were known to be divided in opinion among themselves; three only of their number adhered heartily to the existing constitution:  one was a royalist:  another was a democrat of the Robespierre school.  One of these new and uncourtly men excited laughter by affecting a princely state and splendour of demeanour and equipage.  Another disgusted one set of minds, and annoyed all the rest, by procuring a law for the observation of the tenth day as the day of repose, and declaring it a crime to shut up shops on the Sabbath.  A ridiculous ritual of an avowedly heathen worship followed, and was received with partial horror, universal contempt.  A tyrannical law about the equalisation of weights and measures spread confusion through all mercantile transactions, and was especially unpopular in the provinces.  A contemptible riot, set on foot by one who called himself Gracchus Barboeuf, for the purpose of bringing back the reign of terrorism was indeed suppressed; but the mere occurrence of such an attempt recalled too vividly the days of Robespierre, and by so doing tended to strengthen the cause of the royalists in public opinion.  The truth is, that a vast number of the emigrants had found their way back again to Paris after the downfall of Robespierre, and that the old sway of elegant manners and enlightened saloons was once more re-establishing itself where it had so long been supreme.  The royalist club of Clichy corresponded with the exiled princes, and with the imperial government, and was gaining such influence as to fill Buonaparte himself with alarm.  Everything indicated that the Directory (the five majesties of the Luxembourg, as they were called in derision) held their thrones by a very uncertain tenure; and those gentlemen, nothing being left them but a choice among evils, were fain to throw themselves on the protection of the armies which they dreaded, and of Hoche and Buonaparte—­which last name in particular had long filled them with jealousy proportioned to its splendour and popularity.

Napoleon’s recent conduct, in more important points than one, had excited powerfully the resentment of the Directory, which now appealed to him for aid.  He had taken upon himself the whole responsibility of the preliminary treaty of Leoben, although the French government had sent General Clarke into Italy for the express purpose of controlling him, and acting as his equal at least in the negotiation.  A clause in that treaty, by which Mantua, the strongest fortress in Italy, was to be surrendered back to Austria, had been judged necessary at the time by the general, in order to obtain from the emperor the boundary of the Rhine and the cession of Belgium.  But the Directory thought the conqueror underrated the advantages of his own position and theirs in consenting to it, and but for Carnot would never have ratified it.[19] At the other side of the Italian Peninsula, again,