[473] Letter to the Directory.—See Gourgaud, tom. i., Appendix, p. 336.
[474] "Fouché made great professions of attachment and devotion. He had given directions for closing the barriers, and preventing the departure of couriers and coaches. 'Why, good God?' said the general to him, 'wherefore all these precautions? We go with the nation, and by its strength alone: let no citizen be disturbed, and let the triumph of opinion have nothing in common with the transactions of days in which a factious minority prevailed.'"—Gourgaud, tom. i., p. 87.
[475] Gourgaud, tom. i., p. 86.
[476] The women of lower rank who attended the debates of the Council, plying the task of knitting while they listened to politics, were so denominated. They were always zealous democrats, and might claim in one sense Shakspeare's description of
"The free maids who weave their thread with bones."—S.
[477] "The recommendation was a wise one; but Napoleon thought himself too strong to need any such precaution. 'I swore in the morning,' said he, 'to protect the national representation; I will not this evening violate my oath.'"—Gourgaud, tom. i., p. 87.
[478] Gourgaud, tom. i., p. 87.
[479] Thibaudeau, tom. i., p. 38; Montgaillard, tom. v., p. 267; Thiers, tom. x., p. 380; Lacretelle, tom. xiv., p. 424; Gourgaud, tom. i., p. 92.
[480] "So late as two o'clock in the afternoon, the place assigned to the Council of Five Hundred was not ready. This delay of a few hours was very unfortunate. The deputies formed themselves into groups in the garden; their minds grew heated; they sounded one another, interchanged declarations of the state of their feelings, and organized their opposition."—Gourgaud, tom. i., p. 89.
[481] "The Corsican Arena approached the general, and shook him violently by the collar of his coat. It has been supposed, but without reason, that he had a poniard to kill him."—Mad. de Staël, tom. ii., p 239.