The deed was adroitly done. At
eleven o'clock the day's work was accomplished. There was no longer
a Directory. Napoleon was the appointed chief of the troops, and
they were filling the streets with enthusiastic shouts of "Live
Napoleon." The Council of Ancients were entirely at his disposal.
An a large party in the Council of Five Hundred were also wholly
subservient to his will. Napoleon, proud, silent, reserved reserved,
fully conscious of his own intellectual supremacy, and regarding
the generals, the statesmen, and the multitude around him, as
a man contemplates children, ascended the grand staircase of the
Tuileries as it were his hereditary home. Nearly all parties united
to sustain his triumph. Napoleon was a solider. The guns of Paris
joyfully thundered forth the victory of one who seemed the peculiar
favorite of the God of war. Napoleon was a scholar, stimulating
intellect to its mightiest achievements. The scholars of Paris,
gratefully united to weave a chaplet for the brow of their honored
associate and patron. Napoleon was, for those days of profligacy and
unbridled lust, a model of purity of morals, and of irreproachable
integrity.
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