The great court of the Luxembourg was roofed over with flags; an immense concourse, including all the members of the government and of the two legislative bodies, expected the victorious negotiator; and when he appeared, followed by his staff, and surrounded on all hands with the trophies of his glorious campaign, the enthusiasm of the mighty multitude, to the far greater part of which his person was, up to the moment, entirely unknown, outleaped all bounds, and filled the already jealous hearts of the directors with dark presentiments.

They well knew that the soldiery, returning from Italy, had sung and said through every village that it was high time to get rid of the lawyers, and make the "little corporal" king.

With uneasy hearts did they hear what seemed too like an echo of this cry, from the assembled leaders of opinion in Paris and in France.

Anxious curiosity and mutual distrust were written in every face.

The voice of Napoleon was for the first time heard in an energetic speech, ascribing all the glories that had been achieved to the zeal of the French soldiery--for "the glorious constitution of the year THREE"-- the same glorious constitution which, in the year _eight_, was to receive the _coup de grace_ from his own hand; and Barras, as presiding director, answering, that "Nature had exhausted all her powers in the creation of a Buonaparte," awoke a new thunder of unwelcome applauses.
Carnot had been exiled after the 18th Fructidor, and was at this time actually believed to be dead.