In the anxiety of her watchful love she made herself acquainted with all the details of the discovered conspiracies of both the Jacobins and royalists.  She knew there were two permanent conspiracies at work, though their leaders had been discovered and led into prison.

One of these conspiracies had been organized by the old Jacobins, the republicans of the Convention; and these bands of the “enraged,” as they called themselves, numbered in their ranks all the enemies of constitutional order, all the men of the revolution of 1789; and all these men had sworn with solemn oaths to kill Bonaparte, and to deliver the republic from her greatest and most dangerous enemy.

The other conspiracy, which had its ramifications throughout France, was formed by the royalists.  “The Society of the White Mantle” was mostly composed of Chouans, daring men of Vendee, who were ever ready to sacrifice their lives to the mere notion of royalty, and who like the Jacobins had sworn to murder Bonaparte.

Chevalier, who, with his ingenious infernal machine, sought to kill Bonaparte on his way to Malmaison, belonged to the Society of the White Mantle.  But he was betrayed by his confidant and associate Becyer, who assisted the police to arrest him.  To the conspiracy of the “enraged” belonged the Italians Ceracchi, Arena, and Diana, who at the opera, when the consul appeared in his loge, and was greeted by the acclamations of the people, were ready to fire their pistols at him.  But at the moment they were about to commit the deed from behind the side-scenes, where they had hidden themselves, they were seized, arrested, and led to prison by the police.  Josephine, as already said, knew all these conspiracies; she trembled for Bonaparte’s life, and yet she could not prevent him from appearing in public, and she herself, smiling and apparently unsuspecting, had to appear at Bonaparte’s side at the grand parades, in the national festivities, and at the theatrical performances; no feature on her face was to betray the anxiety she was enduring.

One day, however, not only Bonaparte’s life but also that of Josephine, was imperilled by the conspirators; the famous infernal machine which had been placed on their way to the opera, would have killed the first consul and his wife, if a red Persian shawl had not saved them both.

At the grand opera, that evening, was to be performed Joseph Haydn’s masterpiece, “The Creation.”  The Parisians awaited this performance with great expectation; they rushed to the opera, not only to hear the oratorio, the fame of which had spread from Vienna to Paris, but also to see Bonaparte and his wife, who it was known would attend the performance.