A fortnight after this magnificent fete, thousands of families wept over their banished fathers, forty-eight departments were deprived of their representatives, and forty editors of newspapers were forced to go and drink the waters of the Elbe, the Synamary or the Ohio!  It would be a curious disquisition to seek to discover what really were at that time the Republic and Liberty.”]

He knew that the Clichy party demanded his dismissal and arrest.  He was given to understand that Dumolard was one of the most decided against him, and that, finally, the royalist party was on the point of triumphing.

Before deciding for one party or the other Bonaparte first thought of himself.  He did not imagine that he had yet achieved enough to venture on possessing himself of that power which certainly he might easily have obtained.  He therefore contented himself with joining the party which was, for the moment, supported by public opinion.  I know he was determined to march upon Paris with 25,000 men had affairs taken a turn unfavourable to the Republic, which he preferred to royalty.  He cautiously formed his plan.  To defend the Directory was, he conceived, to defend his own future fortune; that is to say, it was protecting a power which appeared to have no other object than to keep a place for him until his return.

The parties which rose up in Paris produced a reaction in the army.  The employment of the word ‘Monsieur’ had occasioned quarrels, and even bloodshed.  General Augereau, in whose division these contests had taken place, published an order of the day, setting forth that every individual in his division who should use the word ‘Monsieur’, either verbally or in writing, under any pretence whatever, should be deprived of his rank, and declared incapable of serving in the Republican armies.  This order was read at the head of each company.

Bonaparte viewed the establishment of peace as the close of his military career.  Repose and inactivity were to him unbearable.  He sought to take part in the civil affairs of the Republic, and was desirous of becoming one of the five Directors, convinced that, if he obtained that object, he would speedily stand single and alone.  The fulfilment of this wish would have prevented the Egyptian expedition, and placed the imperial crown much sooner upon his head.  Intrigues were carried on in Paris in his name, with the view of securing to him a legal dispensation on the score of age.  He hoped, though he was but eight-and-twenty, to supersede one of the two Directors who were to go out of office.

   —­[The Directors had to be forty years of ago before they could be
   appointed.]—­

His brothers and their friends made great exertions for the success of the project, which, however, was not officially proposed, because it was too adverse to the prevailing notions of the day, and seemed too early a violation of the constitution of the year iii., which, nevertheless, was violated in another way a few months after.