At Marengo, on the 14th of June, Bonaparte obtained a brilliant triumph.  Soon after, at Hohenlinden, Moreau also defeated the Austrians.  These two decisive victories forced Austria to make peace with France, to abandon her alliance with England—­that is to say, with the monarchical principles; and, at the peace ratified in the beginning of the year 1801 at Limeville, to concede to France the grand-duchy of Tuscany.

In July, Bonaparte returned in triumph to France, and was received by the people with enthusiastic acclamations.  Paris was brilliantly illuminated on the day of his return, and round about the Tuileries arose the shouts of the people, who with applauding voices demanded to see the conqueror of Marengo, and would not remain quiet until he appeared on the balcony.  Even Bonaparte was touched by this enthusiasm of the French people; as he retreated from the balcony and retired into his cabinet, he said to Bourrienne.  “Listen!  The people shout again and again; they still send their acclamations toward me.  I love those sounds; they are nearly as sweet as Josephine’s voice.  How proud and happy I am to be loved by such a people!” [Footnote:  Bourrienne, vol. v., p. 35.]

CHAPTER XXXIV.

The infernal machine.

The victory of Marengo, which had pleased the people, had filled the royalists with terror and fear, and destroyed their hopes of a speedy restoration of the monarchy, making them conscious of its fruitless pretensions.  With the frenzy of hatred and the bitterness of revenge they turned against the first consul, who was not now their expected savior of the monarchy, but a usurper who wanted to gain France for himself.

The royalists and the republicans united for the same object.  Both parties longed to destroy Bonaparte:  the one to re-establish the republic of the year 1793, and the other the throne of the Bourbons.  Everywhere conspiracies and secret associations were organized, and the watchful and active police discovered in a few months more than ten plots, the aim of which was to murder Bonaparte.

Josephine heard this with sorrow and fear, with tears of anxiety and love.  She had now given her whole heart and soul to Bonaparte, and it was the torment of martyrdom to see him every day threatened by assassins and by invisible foes, who from dark and hidden places drew their daggers at him.  Her love surrounded him with vigilant friends and servants, who sought to discover every danger and to remove it from his path.

When he was coming to Malmaison, Josephine before his arrival would send her servants to search every hiding-place in the park, to see if in some shady grove a murderer might not be secreted; she entreated Junot or Murat to send scouts from Paris on the road to Malmaison to remove all suspicious persons from it.  Yet her heart trembled with anxiety when she knew him to be on the way, and, when he had safely arrived, she would receive him with rapture, as if he had just escaped an imminent danger, and would make him laugh by the exclamations of joy with which she greeted him as one saved from danger.