Bonaparte arrived in Paris the morning of the 24th Vendemiaire, Year VIII. (October 16, 1799). He went at once to his house in the rue de la Victoire, and alone, as he did after his return from Italy. But then he knew that he would not find Josephine there, whereas he felt sure that she would be there. The empty house filled him with bitterness.

Where was his wife? Was she guilty, and did she dread to meet her enraged husband? Was everything that had been said about her true? Bonaparte's suspicious heart was full of wrath. His brothers, who were extremely hostile to Josephine, less from zeal for morality than from envy of her influence, skilfully fed this feeling of jealousy and anger. Bonaparte, who was deeply distressed already, began to think of separation and divorce. His old love, rekindled by his annoyance and fury, tortured him again. For a moment, he forgot the supreme power he was about to grasp, and thought only of his conjugal infelicity.

Josephine, too, was uneasy. She had tried to meet her husband to anticipate the accusations that would be made against her. Confident of the power of her beauty, she had said to herself: "Let me be the first to see him, and he will fall into my arms."

But she had not been able to meet him on the way; and he when he arrived had found a solitude. What must he have thought in the empty rooms? He had been there two days when Josephine reached Paris. She trembled with anxiety. What was going to happen? Was she to see a lover's or a judge's face confronting her? Was she to meet the Bonaparte of other days, so loving and affectionate, or a Bonaparte angry, black, and terrible?

It was a cruel uncertainty, full of anguish. Poor woman! She was full of joy and of uneasiness, uncertain whether she was to find happiness or misery. Swiftly she ascended the little staircase to the room, but, to her grief, the door was locked. She knocked; it was not opened. She knocked again, and called, and begged.

He, protected by the bolts, answered from within that the door would never again be opened for her. Then she fell on her knees and wept. The whole house was filled with her sobs. She prayed and implored, but in vain. The night wore on; she remained at the threshold of the forbidden room, which was a sort of paradise lost. She did not lose all hope; her entreaties and tears did not cease. Are not tears a woman's last argument? Were not those tears to be dried by kisses?

She could not believe that after having been so much adored, she would not be able to regain her empire, Josephine still hoped, and with reason.

Yet she had long to wait; Bonaparte was so inflexible that at one moment she thought of ceasing the struggle. She was about to withdraw, exhausted by fatigue and emotion, when it occurred to one of her women to say to her, "Send for your son and daughter."

She followed this wise advice. Eugene and Hortense came, and added their entreaties to Josephine's. "I beg of you.... Do not abandon our mother. . . . It will kill her. And we, poor orphans, whose father perished on the scaffold, shall we also lose him whom Providence put in his place?"

Bonaparte at last consented to open his door. His face was still severe; he uttered reproaches, and Josephine trembled. Turning to Eugene he said, "As for you, you shall not suffer for your mother's misdeeds; I shall keep you with me."

"No, General," answered the young man; "I bid you farewell on the spot." Bonaparte began to yield; he pressed Eugene to his heart, and seeing both Josephine and Hortense on their knees, be forgave, and with eyes bright with joy, let himself be convinced by Josephine's arguments. The reconciliation was complete. At seven in the morning he sent for his brother Lucien, who had brought the charges, and when Lucien entered the room, he found the husband and wife reconciled and lying in the same bed.

Bonaparte did wisely in thus making a reconciliation with his wife. A separation would have been a choice bit of scandal for the ill-disposed Royalists to turn to their profit. Bonaparte was not yet a Caesar; his wife might be suspected. Besides, according to the tenets of society under the Directory, suspicions of that sort were not fatal to a fashionable woman, and public opinion had more serious questions to consider, than whether Citizeness Bonaparte had been, or had not been, faithful to her husband.

The hero of the Pyramids did the best thing possible when he thus put an end to the not wholly disinterested accusations of his brothers, and turned his attention to more serious matters than the recriminations of a husband who, rightly or wrongly, thought himself deceived. Josephine was once more to further her husband's plans. She was bright, tactful, and perfectly familiar with Parisian society and the political world. Knowing all about everything, she was about to play, with consummate skill, her part in preparing for the coup d'etat of Brumaire.

As soon as he arrived, Bonaparte became conscious of the distrust of the Directory. The very first day he went to the Luxembourg with Monge, a friend of Gohier, the President of the Directory.

"How glad I am, my dear President," said Monge, "to find the Republic triumphant!"

"I too am very glad," said Bonaparte, in some embarrassment. "The news we received in Egypt was so alarming, that I did not hesitate to leave my army to come to share its perils."

"General," answered Gohier, "they were great, but we have made a happy issue. You have come just in time to celebrate the glorious victories of your companions in arms."

The next day, the 25th Vendemiaire, Bonaparte made another visit to the Directory. "Citizen Directors," he exclaimed, touching the handle of his sword, "I swear that this sword shall never be drawn except in defence of the Republic and of its government."

Gohier replied: "General, your presence revives in every Frenchman's heart the glorious feeling of liberty. It is with shouts of 'Long live the Republic!' that Bonaparte ought to be received." The ceremony terminated with the fraternal embrace, but it was neither given nor received in a spirit of brotherly love.

The moment of the crisis drew near. Where was Bonaparte to find support? Among the zealous revolutionists, or on the side of the moderate? The head of the moderate party was one of the Directors, Sieyes. For this former abbe he had an instinctive repulsion; but on reflection he felt that he needed him, and he decided to make use of him. Moreau, who had won celebrity by his victories, might be his rival; he conciliated him. Gohier has described their interview.

He had invited to dinner Bonaparte, Josephine, and Sieyes. When Josephine saw the last-named in the drawing-room, "What have you done?" she asked Gohier. "Sieyes is the man whom Bonaparte detests more than any one. He can't endure him." In fact, during the whole dinner, Bonaparte did not once speak to Sieyes; he even pretended not to see him. Sieyes was furious when he rose from the table. "Did you notice," he asked his host, "how the insolent fellow treated a member of the board which ought to have ordered him to be shot?"

After dinner Moreau arrived. It was the first time the two distinguished generals had met, and each seemed delighted to see the other. It was Bonaparte who made all the advances. A few days later he gave to Moreau, as a token of friendship, a sabre set with diamonds, and on the 18th Brumaire he was able to persuade him to be the jailer of the Directors who would not aid the coup d'etat.

Madame Bonaparte was always of service to her husband in his relations with the men of whom he wanted to make use. She fascinated every one who came near her, by her exquisite grace and charming courtesy. All the brusqueness and violence of Bonaparte's manners were tempered by the soothing and insinuating gentleness of his amiable and kindly wife. She was to exercise direct influence on the victims and accomplices of the coup d'etat, on Barras, Gohier, Sieyes, Fouche, Moreau, and Talleyrand. Who knows?

Without Josephine's skill and tact, Bonaparte might, perhaps, have made a failure, have broken prematurely with Barras, have thrown off the mask too soon, before he had had time to make a formidable plot. The 8th Brumaire (October 30), when dining with Barras, he had great difficulty in restraining himself. Barras played the same game that he did, and spoke of his unselfishness, his fatigue, his shattered health, his need of rest, and said that he must resign and have a wholly unknown person, General Hedouville, put at the head of the government. Bonaparte was on the point of breaking out. He left Barras's rooms in a rage, and before going from the Luxembourg, went into those of Sieyes.

"It's with you, and with you alone, that I mean to march," he said, and it was agreed to have everything ready for the 18th or 20th Brumaire.

Meanwhile Bonaparte became more crafty than ever. He said he was tired of men and things, that be was ill and quite upset by changing a dry climate for a damp one; he posed for a Cincinnatus anxious to return to the plough, and kept out of the eyes of the public, arousing its curiosity the less he gratified it. If he went to the theatre, it was without giving notice, and he took a close box. He dressed more simply than usual. Instead of a full uniform or epaulettes, be wore the gray overcoat which was destined to become a subject of legend. He affected to prefer to anything else scientific or literary conversation with his colleagues of the Institute. The austere Gohier, who was naturally credulous, and, besides, deceived by Josephine, refused to believe in any lawless plans on the part of such a man. Himself a patriot and a Republican, he imagined that every one agreed with him regarding the Constitution of the Year III as the holy ark. All this time he was weaving his political plans as if he were forming a plan for a battle.

Every party regarded him as its mainstay, and every party was mistaken. Bonaparte meant to make use of one of them, perhaps of all, but not to be of service to any one of them. As he said afterwards to Madame de Remusat, in talking about this period of his career: "The Directory was not uneasy at my return; I was extremely on my guard, and never in my life have I displayed more skill. I saw the Abbe Sieyes, and promised him the carrying out of his long-winded constitution; I received the leaders of the Jacobins, the agents of the Bourbons; I gave my advice to every one, but I only gave what would further my plans. I kept aloof from the populace because I knew that it was time; curiosity would make every one dog my steps. Every one ran into my traps, and when I became the head of the State, there was not a party in France that did not base its hopes on my success."

The hour was approaching when there was to be realized the wish, the prediction, which Suleau had made in 1792, in the ninth number of his paper which he published among Conde's soldiers at Coblentz. "I repeat it calmly that the tutelary deity whom I invoke for my country is a despot, provided that he be a man of genius. It is the absolute inflexibility of a Richelieu that I demand; a man like that needs only territory and force to create an empire. France can be made a nation again only after it has been bowed in silence beneath the iron rule of a severe and relentless master. When I call on despotism to come to the aid of my unhappy country, I mean the union of powers in the hands of an imperious master, of a cruel capacity, jealous of rule, and utterly absolute. I demand a magnanimous usurper who knows how, by means of the haughty and brilliant spirit of a Cromwell, to make a people admired and respected, whom he compels to respect and bless their subjection." This issue was about to appear. The long plot framed by the reaction since 1795 was finished.