"Ho, Jean Mettot! Come and sit you down with us and share our mid-day meal! This is a fortunate meeting, and I want you to know Monsieur Junot. He's a brave fellow whose mettle I tried at Toulon! You two should know each other!" Jean, nothing loath, joined the little party, and listened with interest to their discussion of present political affairs.
"I do not know what this country is coming to, Jean!" said Bonaparte. "Public sentiment is like a pendulum! First it swings off to one extreme, as it did in '93, and then started back on the Tenth Thermidor. It came to a happy medium just a short time after that, and now,—behold you!—off it goes in an entirely opposite direction, and the royalists are coming into favour again!"
"What's the trouble?" asked Jean. "I'm so busy that I've little time to give to political discussions, and one hears no news in that lonely hole of a Temple, nowadays! I wish you would explain it to me!"
"Why, the long and short of it is this," replied Bonaparte, obligingly. "Of course you know that on August twenty-second the Convention adopted a new Constitution for the year III. According to this Constitution, the Legislative power shall be an executive body of five Directors, a Council of Five Hundred, and a Council of the Ancients composed of two hundred and fifty members. That is all very well, but recently the Convention has added a new decree,—that two-thirds of the members of this new Legislature shall be chosen from themselves—the Convention—and only the remaining one-third by the people at large. So the people naturally consider themselves slighted, and are yelling,—'Down with the Convention!'"
"But," interrupted Jean eagerly, "are not the people right? Is not that what a Republic is for? Was not that the principle for which the monarchy was overthrown and so much blood spilt?"
"Wait, wait, lad!" commanded Bonaparte. "You have not heard all yet! The people of France have had eight centuries of monarchy, and only three years of ruling themselves. They are enthusiastic, but also childish and fickle to the last degree, and are no more fit to be allowed to go their own way than so many babes! They must be guided a while longer by the men who planned and guided the Revolution,—the old Convention! But there's more behind it than that, and they are blind as moles who don't see it!
"The returned Royalists are hiding behind all these disgruntled citizens, and they are going to take advantage of and encourage an uprising to overthrow the existing government. And what then?—Back will come monarchy again!" Jean was delighted with this clear yet simple explanation.
"I see it all now!" he declared. "But what else is happening?"
"Paris," continued Bonaparte, "is divided into forty-eight sections. Of these, every section but one has voted against the new decree; and while many of the sections are inactive, there are seven actually in arms against the Convention, and the worst of these is the Section Lepelletier. Mark my words, Jean! As sure as this is the first of October, there will be a crisis before the month is out! And what is more, something tells me this crisis will mean much for us three now sitting here so quietly, sipping our coffee!"
Bonaparte's prophecy proved true in every respect, except that the crisis came sooner than he had predicted. On the fourth of October, Paris was in a state of indescribable confusion. Bells were sounding the "generale," that horrible call to insurrection. Streets were thronged with citizens rushing frenziedly to and fro shouting,—"Death to the Convention!" "Down with the Two-thirds!" Crowds of soldiers forced their way through the excited mobs, and skirmishing between the opposing parties could be heard in every quarter. But worse was yet to come!