Late that afternoon conspiracy held high carnival in the parlor of Lahary, an influential member of the Council of Ancients. The conspirators present were scattered in groups about the apartment, engaged in lively conversation, when Hubert the banker and advocate Desmarais made their entrance upon the scene.
"Messieurs," Lahary was saying, "there are a number of us present. Let us begin our deliberations. I shall preside. Our colleague Regnier has the floor."
Regnier at once began: "Gentlemen, yesterday, in a long conference held at the home of our friend the president of the Council of Ancients, various opinions were advanced and discussed, but we separated without having reached any conclusion, setting to-day for the final deliberation. We should no longer temporize. Time presses; public opinion, very uneasy, very restless, is watching; it apprehends a coup d'etat, they say, from moment to moment. This state of mind is particularly favorable to our projects, only we must make speed to profit by circumstances, and hasten events. Else the Council of Five Hundred will steal a march on us and appeal to an insurrection, in the name of the Constitution in danger. We should thus lose much of our vantage ground."
"Aye, let us haste," agreed Fouché. "Trust to my long experience. In revolutions, he who attacks has three chances to one."
"The experience and authority of our friend Fouché in matters of conspiracy can not be too highly estimated," Regnier hastened to put in. "I am for attacking, and that to-morrow, the 18th Brumaire. Here is my project. The Council of Five Hundred is the only real obstacle to the overthrow of the Constitution, which, it is decided, shall give way to another form of government, to be determined on later. The Council of Five Hundred, composed in its immense majority of republicans, is, then, the stumbling block to our projects. It must be either suppressed or annihilated."
"It is more than probable that the canaille of the suburbs will not budge an inch. Nevertheless, let us proceed prudently, as if an insurrection were really to be feared. Let us get all the police, horse and foot, upon the field to repress all suggestion of revolt," advised Fouché.
"To conjure away the peril of an insurrection, this is what I would propose," Regnier continued. "The Constitution of the year III vests exclusively in us, the Council of Ancients, the right to appoint or change the meeting-place of the Assemblies. Let us, in virtue of our constitutional right, transfer our seat and that of the Five Hundred to St. Cloud, which we can invest with five or six thousand troops, of which we will give the command to General Bonaparte. Things thus prepared, if the Council of Five Hundred refuses to adhere to our most drastic measures—a refusal who can doubt?—we shall pronounce the dissolution of their Council, and commission General Bonaparte to carry out the decree. Triumph is assured—"
"I am authorized by my brother," spoke up a new party to the debate, Lucien Bonaparte, "to declare to you that if he is placed in supreme command of the troops he will answer for everything, even to the burning of Paris."
"Those are extreme measures, but we must not recoil before them. We may have to burn Paris," chimed in the plotters in chorus.
"Yes, I share the opinion of my colleagues," declared Desmarais the lawyer. "The Council of Five Hundred, transferred to St. Cloud, becomes no longer an object of fear. But how can we justify that relegation in the eyes of the public?"