Not until the last detail of the work had been finished and put in legal form, did Napoleon quit St. Cloud. He had even dictated a proclamation in which he gave to the public his own account of the events of the day. He again laid stress on the Jacobin plot which had threatened the Republic, he again renewed his vows to that Republic, he praised the conduct of the Ancients, and claimed that the violence used against the Five Hundred had been made necessary by the factious men, would-be assassins, who had sought to intimidate the good men of that body. This proclamation was posted in Paris before day.
To humor the fiction, if it was a fiction, that Napoleon had been threatened with knives, a grenadier, Thomas Thomé, was brought forward, who said that he had warded off the blow. He showed where his clothes had been cut or torn. As soon as the stage could be properly arranged for the scene, the amiable and grateful Josephine publicly embraced Thomé and made him a present of jewels. Napoleon promoted him later to a captaincy.
The men who stood by Napoleon in this crisis left him under a debt which he never ceased to acknowledge and to pay. With one possible exception, he loaded them with honors and riches. The possible exception was Collot, the banker, who, according to Fouché, supplied the campaign fund. The bare fact that Napoleon did not at any time treat Collot with favor, is strong circumstantial evidence that he rendered no such aid at this crisis as created a debt of gratitude.
It was morning, but before daybreak, when Napoleon, tired but exultant, reached home from St. Cloud. As he threw himself upon the bed by the side of Josephine, he called out to his secretary:—
“Remember, Bourrienne, we shall sleep in the Luxembourg to-morrow.”
CHAPTER XXI
On Sunday evening, Brumaire 19, Napoleon had been a desperate political gambler, staking fortune and life upon a throw; on Monday morning following he calmly seated himself in the armchair at the palace of the Luxembourg and began to give laws to France. He took the first place and held it, not by any trick or legal contrivance, but by his native imperiousness and superiority. In genius, in cunning, in courage, he was the master of the doctrinaire Sieyès, and of the second-rate lawyer, Roger-Ducos; besides, he held the army in the hollow of his hand.
The sad comfort of saying “I told you so,” was all that was left to Sieyès. “Gentlemen, we have a master,” said he to his friends that Monday evening; and the will of this imperious colleague he did not seriously try to oppose. In the very first meeting of the consuls, Napoleon had won the complete supremacy by refusing to share in the secret fund which the Directors had hidden away for their own uses. They had emptied the treasury, and had spent $15,000,000 in advance of the revenues, yet they had laid by for the rainy day which might overtake themselves personally the sum of 800,000 francs or about $160,000. Sieyès blandly called attention to this fact, and proposed that he, Ducos, and Napoleon should divide the fund. “Share it between you,” said Napoleon, who refused to touch it.
