[Footnote 3: "Fouché," said Napoleon, "is a miscreant of all colors, a priest, a terrorist, and one who took an active part in many bloody scenes of the Revolution. He is a man who can worm all your secrets out of you, with an air of calmness and unconcern. He is very rich; but his riches have been badly acquired. He never was my confidant. Never did he approach me without bending to the ground. But I never had any esteem for him. I employed him merely as an instrument."]
The Council of Five Hundred, in great confusion and bewilderment, assembled at eleven o'clock. Lucien immediately communicated the decree transferring their session to St. Cloud. This cut off all debate. The decree was perfectly legal. There could therefore be no legal pretext for opposition. Napoleon, the idol of the army, had the whole military power obedient to his nod. Therefore resistance of any kind was worse than folly. 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. And a large party in the Council of Five Hundred were also wholly subservient to his will. Napoleon, proud, silent, 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 if it were his hereditary home. Nearly all parties united to sustain his triumph. Napoleon was a soldier. 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. The proffered bribe of millions could not tempt him. The dancing daughters of Herodias, with all their blandishments, could not lure him from his life of Herculean toil and from his majestic patriotism. The wine which glitters in the cup, never vanquished him. At the shrine of no vice was he found a worshiper. The purest and the best in France, disgusted with that gilded corruption which had converted the palaces of the Bourbons into harems of voluptuous sin, and still more deeply loathing that vulgar and revolting vice, which had transformed Paris into a house of infamy, enlisted all their sympathies in behalf of the exemplary husband and the incorruptible patriot. Napoleon was one of the most firm and unflinching friends of law and order. France was weary of anarchy and was trembling under the apprehension that the gutters of the guillotine were again to be clotted with blood. And mothers and maidens prayed for God's blessing upon Napoleon, who appeared to them as a messenger sent from Heaven for their protection.