Gohier and Moulins, no longer depending on Sieyes and Roger Ducos, waited for their colleague, Barras, in the hall of the Directory, to adopt some measure on the decree for removing the Councils to St. Cloud.  But they were disappointed; for Barras, whose eyes had been opened by my visit on the preceding night, did not join them.  He had been invisible to his colleagues from the moment that Bruix and M. de Talleyrand had informed him of the reality of what he already suspected; and insisted on his retirement.

On the 18th Brumaire a great number of military, amounting to about 10,000 men, were assembled in the gardens of the Tuileries, and were reviewed by Bonaparte, accompanied by Generals Beurnonville, Moreau, and Macdonald.  Bonaparte read to them the decree just issued by the commission of inspectors of the Council of the Ancients, by which the legislative body was removed to St. Cloud; and by which he himself was entrusted with the execution of that decree, and appointed to the command of all the military force in Paris, and afterwards delivered an address to the troops.

Whilst Bonaparte was haranguing the soldiers, the Council of the Ancients published an address to the French people, in which it was declared that the seat of the legislative body was changed, in order to put down the factions, whose object was to control the national representation.

While all this was passing abroad I was at the General’s house in the Rue de la Victoire; which I never left during the whole day.  Madame Bonaparte and I were not without anxiety in Bonaparte’s absence.  I learned from Josephine that Joseph’s wife had received a visit from Adjutant-General Rapatel, who had been sent by Bonaparte and Moreau to bring her husband to the Tuileries.  Joseph was from home at the time, and so the message was useless.  This circumstance, however, awakened hopes which we had scarcely dared to entertain.  Moreau was then in accordance with Bonaparte, for Rapatel was sent in the name of both Generals.  This alliance, so long despaired of, appeared to augur favourably.  It was one of Bonaparte’s happy strokes.  Moreau, who was a slave to military discipline, regarded his successful rival only as a chief nominated by the Council of the Ancients.  He received his orders and obeyed them.  Bonaparte appointed him commander of the guard of the Luxembourg, where the Directors were under confinement.  He accepted the command, and no circumstance could have contributed more effectually to the accomplishment of Bonaparte’s views and to the triumph of his ambition.

At length Bonaparte, whom we had impatiently expected, returned.  Almost everything had gone well with him, for he had had only to do with soldiers.  In the evening he said to me, “I am sure that the committee of inspectors of the hall are at this very moment engaged in settling what is to be done at St. Cloud to-morrow.  It is better to let them decide the matter, for by that means their vanity is flattered.  I will obey orders which I have myself concerted.”  What Bonaparte was speaking of had been arranged nearly two or three days previously.  The committee of inspectors was under the influence of the principal conspirators.