Towards the middle of September, 1797, Bonaparte, accompanied by his wife, as his family had left after Pauline's marriage with General Leclerc, had taken up his quarters in the Friuli, at the castle of Passeriano, there to conclude diplomatic negotiations with the Austrian government. This was a fine country-place belonging to Manin, the former doge, and was on the left bank of the Tagliamento, four leagues from Udine, and three from the ruins of Aquileia.

Here the warrior appeared as a peace-maker. Being secured against the Royalists by the coup d'etat of the 18th Fructidor, from which he got the profit without the odium, he at once appeared in the light of a conservative, and in his relations with the Austrian plenipotentiaries he remembered with pleasure that his wife was of high rank and that he himself was a gentleman.

He already manifested his pretensions to noble birth of which Prince Metternich speaks in his memoirs. According to the famous Austrian diplomatist, he set great store by his nobility and the antiquity of his family.

"More than once," adds Prince Metternich, "he has tried to prove to me that only envy and calumny have been able to throw any doubts on his nobility. 'I am in a singular position,' he used to say. 'There are genealogists who trace my family back to the deluge, and others say that I am of low birth. The truth lies between the two. The Bonapartes are good Corsican gentlemen, not famous, because we have seldom left the island, and a good deal better than many of the coxcombs who presume to look down on us.'"

The Austrian plenipotentiaries were Count Louis de Cobenzl, the Marquis of Gallo, General Count Mersfeld, and M. de Ficquelmont. Count Cobenzl was at that time leading Austrian diplomatist. He had been ambassador to the principal European courts, and for a long time in Russia, during the reign of Catherine the Great, whose especial esteem he had succeeded in winning.

"Proud of his rank and importance," we read in the Memorial of Saint Helena, "he had not a doubt that his manners and familiarity with courts would easily overwhelm a general who had risen from the camps of the Revolution; consequently he met the French general with a certain levity, but the air and the first remarks with which he was greeted soon put him in his proper place, in which he remained ever after." M. de Cobenzl was an accomplished man of the world, a true representative of the old regime. He was a brilliant and witty talker, who told most cleverly stories of every court of Europe; he was famous for his social skill, and he greatly amused Madame Bonaparte, who found in him the manners of the old court of Versailles.

The Marquis of Gallo, a most acute, supple, and conciliating man, was not an Austrian; he was a Neapolitan, and ambassador from Naples to the court of Vienna. There he had won such regard that Austria chose him for one of its plenipotentiaries.

"Yours is not a German name," Bonaparte said to him the first time he saw him.

"You are right," answered the Marquis of Gallo; "I am ambassador from Naples."

"And since when," asked the French general dryly, "have I had to treat with Naples? We are at peace. Has not the Emperor of Austria any more negotiators of the old stamp? Is all the old Viennese aristocracy extinct?"

The Marquis, who feared lest these remarks should come to the official notice of the Vienna cabinet, at once devoted himself to smoothing down Bonaparte, who at once became gentle, being perfectly satisfied with having got an advantage over the Marquis which he never lost. The Marquis of Gallo, who later was ambassador from the Bourbons of Naples to the First Consul, then ambassador from King Joseph Bonaparte to the Emperor Napoleon, confessed to him frankly, when speaking of their first meeting, that no one had ever in his life so frightened him.

The two other plenipotentiaries were General von Mersfold, a distinguished officer, an upright man, of no way suited Bonaparte's views. He knew that in order to attain supreme power he should need the clergy; and although he had so often declaimed against tyrants, he thought it better to show some consideration for the sovereigns whom within a few years he should have to treat as brothers. The attitude which he adopted at Passeriano bespeaks such calculations.

A clear-sighted observer might have already detected, in this tool of the Directory, the First Consul and Emperor. By his education, his tastes, his marriage, his ideas and principles, he belonged to both the old society and the Revolution. From each he took what aid he could, for the gratification of his ambition and the realization of his dreams. "My campaign was not a bad one," he said one day to Madame de Remusat, speaking of this period of his life. "I became an important person for Europe. On one hand, by means of my order of the day, I encouraged the Revolutionary system; on the other, I secretly won the emigre's; I let them form hopes. It's always easy to deceive that party, because they never think of what is, but of what they want. I received most magnificent offers if only I would follow General Monk's example. The Pretender wrote to me, in his hesitating, flowery style. I secured the Pope more by not going to Rome than if I had burned his capital. Finally, I became important and formidable; yet the Directory, which was uneasy about me, could bring no charge against me." Never was the skilful dissimulation, which was one of the principal qualities of Bonaparte's character, more ingenious and more refined.

He wrote to the Directory: "My moral condition requires that I mingle with the mass of citizens. A great power has too long been entrusted to my hands. In every case I have employed it for the good of my country: so much the worse for those who, believing in no virtue, may have suspected mine. My reward is my own conscience and the verdict of posterity."

On October 1, 1797, he wrote to Talleyrand: "All that I am now doing, all the arrangements I am now settling are the last service I can render my country. My health is wholly destroyed; health is indispensable, and, in war, nothing can take its place. The government will doubtless, in accordance with my request of a week ago, have appointed a commission of publicists to organize a free Italy; new plenipotentianes to continue or renew the negotiations; and, finally, a general to whom it can entrust the command of the army, for I know no one who can take my place in these three equally interesting posts."

The Directory was jealous and suspicious; it already had a presentiment that it would find its master in Bonaparte; but it rivalled him in dissimulation, and, in refusing to accept his resignation, made protestations of friendship which were anything but sincere. Bottot, Barras's secretary, wrote to Bonaparte, after his return from Passeriano to Paris, that his last moments at Passeriano had sorely distressed his heart; that cruel thoughts had accompanied him to the very doors of the Directory; but that these cruel thoughts had been dispelled by seeing the admiration and affection which the Directors felt for the conqueror of Italy. In spite of these protestations, which on both sides were mere political manoeuvring, the hostility between Barras and Bonaparte, although lessened by Josephine's secret influence, was yet plain to clear-sighted eyes, and was to cease only with the act of violence of the 18th Brumaire.