But the old world outside did not cease its own march; it fought its battles, spun its intrigues, and continued its hostilities.  Josephine could not withdraw herself from this old world; she dared not place the paradise of Malmaison as a wall of partition between her and the wild stir and tumult of Paris; she had to rush away from the world of innocence, from this country-life, into the whirlpool of the agitated, restless life of Paris.

Bonaparte had made it a duty for her to watch his friends as well as his foes, and there were then happening in Paris events which appeared to the wife of General Bonaparte worthy of close observation.  His long absence had diminished the number of his friends, and at the same time gave strength to and increased his enemies, who were ever busy to defame and vilify his heroic deeds, and to turn them into a crime; they represented that the expedition to Egypt, notwithstanding the glorious exploits of the French army, should have had more striking results, and the louder they cried out, the more feeble and timid were the voices of his friends.  The latter daily found their position becoming more precarious, for they were the moderate republicans, the supporters of the actual order of things, and of the constitution which France had adopted.  Against this constitution arose, with loud cries, two hostile parties, which increased every day, and assumed toward it a more and more threatening attitude.

These parties were, on the one hand, the royalists, who saw their hopes increase every day, because the armies of the European powers, allied against France, were approaching nearer and nearer the French frontiers; and, on the other, the republicans of the past, who hoped to re-establish the old days of the Convention and of the red republic.

Both parties tried to undermine society and the existing authorities; they organized conspiracies, seditions, and tumults, and were constantly inventing new intrigues, so as to destroy the government, and set themselves up in its place.

The royalists trusted to the combined powers of the princes of Europe, with whom the exiled Bourbons were approaching; and in La Vendee the guerilla warfare had already begun against the republic.

The red republicans dreamed of re-establishing the guillotine, which was to restore France to health by delivering her from all the adversaries of the republic and bring back the glorious days of 1793; they left nothing untried to excite the people into dissatisfaction and open rebellion.

Against both parties stood the Directory, who in these days of tumult and sedition, were themselves feeble and without energy, seeking only to prolong their existence.  They were satisfied to live on day by day, and shrank from every decided action which might increase the wrath of the parties or destroy the brilliant present of the mighty directors, in whose ears the title of “the five monarchs” sounded so sweetly.