The haughtiness, for such it was considered, of his behaviour in the society of the capital, was of a piece with what he had already manifested in the camp. In the course of his first campaigns, his officers, even of the highest rank, became sensible, by degrees, to a total change of demeanour. An old acquaintance of the Toulon period, joining the army, was about to throw himself into the general's arms with the warmth of the former familiarity. Napoleon's cold eye checked him; and he perceived in a moment how he had altered with his elevation. He had always, on the other hand, affected much familiarity with the common soldiery. He disdained not on occasion to share the ration or to taste the flask of a sentinel; and the French private, often as intelligent as those whom fortune has placed above him, used to address the great general with even more frankness than his own captain. Napoleon, in one of his Italian despatches, mentions to the Directory the pleasure which he often derived from the conversation of the men: "But yesterday," says he, "a common trooper addressed me as I was riding, and told me he thought he could suggest the movement which ought to be adopted. I listened to him, and heard him detail some operations on which I had actually resolved but a little before." It has been noticed (perhaps by over-nice speculators) as a part of the same system, that Napoleon, on his return to Paris, continued to employ the same tradespeople, however inferior in their several crafts, who had served him in the days of his obscurity.[21]
If we may follow M. de Bourienne, Napoleon at this time laboured under intense anxiety of mind. Conscious of the daring heights to which he had ere now accustomed his ambitious imagination, he was fearful that others had divined his secret, and was haunted with the perpetual dread that some accident might unite Royalists and Republicans in the work of his personal ruin.
The first public appearance of Buonaparte occurred (January 2, 1798) when the treaty of Campo-Formio was to be formally presented to the Directory. The great court of the Luxembourg was roofed over with flags; an immense concourse, including all the members of the government and of the two legislative bodies, expected the victorious negotiator; and when he appeared, followed by his staff, and surrounded on all hands with the trophies of his glorious campaign, the enthusiasm of the mighty multitude, to the far greater part of which his person was, up to the moment, entirely unknown, outleaped all bounds, and filled the already jealous hearts of the directors with dark presentiments. They well knew that the soldiery, returning from Italy, had sung and said through every village that it was high time to get rid of the lawyers, and make the "little corporal" king. With uneasy hearts did they hear what seemed too like an echo of this cry, from the assembled leaders of opinion in Paris and in France. Anxious curiosity and mutual distrust were written in every face. The voice of Napoleon was for the first time heard in an energetic speech, ascribing all the glories that had been achieved to the zeal of the French soldiery--for "the glorious constitution of the year THREE"--the same glorious constitution which, in the year _eight_, was to receive the _coup de grace_ from his own hand; and Barras, as presiding director, answering, that "Nature had exhausted all her powers in the creation of a Buonaparte," awoke a new thunder of unwelcome applauses.