Chapter IV: Laying the Train

Late that afternoon conspiracy held high carnival in the parlor of Lahary, an influential member of the Council of Ancients. The conspirators present were scattered in groups about the apartment, engaged in lively conversation, when Hubert the banker and advocate Desmarais made their entrance upon the scene.

"Messieurs," Lahary was saying, "there are a number of us present. Let us begin our deliberations. I shall preside. Our colleague Regnier has the floor."

Regnier at once began: "Gentlemen, yesterday, in a long conference held at the home of our friend the president of the Council of Ancients, various opinions were advanced and discussed, but we separated without having reached any conclusion, setting to-day for the final deliberation. We should no longer temporize. Time presses; public opinion, very uneasy, very restless, is watching; it apprehends a coup d'etat, they say, from moment to moment. This state of mind is particularly favorable to our projects, only we must make speed to profit by circumstances, and hasten events. Else the Council of Five Hundred will steal a march on us and appeal to an insurrection, in the name of the Constitution in danger. We should thus lose much of our vantage ground."

"Aye, let us haste," agreed Fouche. "Trust to my long experience. In revolutions, he who attacks has three chances to one."

"The experience and authority of our friend Fouche in matters of conspiracy can not be too highly estimated," Regnier hastened to put in. "I am for attacking, and that to-morrow, the 18th Brumaire. Here is my project. The Council of Five Hundred is the only real obstacle to the overthrow of the Constitution, which, it is decided, shall give way to another form of government, to be determined on later. The Council of Five Hundred, composed in its immense majority of republicans, is, then, the stumbling block to our projects. It must be either suppressed or annihilated."

"It is more than probable that the canaille of the suburbs will not budge an inch. Nevertheless, let us proceed prudently, as if an insurrection were really to be feared. Let us get all the police, horse and foot, upon the field to repress all suggestion of revolt," advised Fouche.

"To conjure away the peril of an insurrection, this is what I would propose," Regnier continued. "The Constitution of the year III vests exclusively in us, the Council of Ancients, the right to appoint or change the meeting-place of the Assemblies. Let us, in virtue of our constitutional right, transfer our seat and that of the Five Hundred to St. Cloud, which we can invest with five or six thousand troops, of which we will give the command to General Bonaparte. Things thus prepared, if the Council of Five Hundred refuses to adhere to our most drastic measures--a refusal who can doubt?--we shall pronounce the dissolution of their Council, and commission General Bonaparte to carry out the decree. Triumph is assured--"

"I am authorized by my brother," spoke up a new party to the debate, Lucien Bonaparte, "to declare to you that if he is placed in supreme command of the troops he will answer for everything, even to the burning of Paris."

"Those are extreme measures, but we must not recoil before them. We may have to burn Paris," chimed in the plotters in chorus.

"Yes, I share the opinion of my colleagues," declared Desmarais the lawyer. "The Council of Five Hundred, transferred to St. Cloud, becomes no longer an object of fear. But how can we justify that relegation in the eyes of the public?"

Fouche smiled sardonically. "Citizen Brutus Desmarais," said he, "you have forgotten the fifty thousand Septembrists who are in the catacombs! My spies and my horse police will spread themselves all over Paris to-morrow trumpeting to the good bourgeois that a tremendous plot has been unearthed to-night by Monsieur Fouche, Minister of Police. He, wishing to frustrate the abominable projects of the scoundrels of Terrorists, who are in league with the Five Hundred, all Jacobins, warned the Council of Ancients of what was on foot; and the noble conscript fathers, who would be the first to perish under the daggers of the bloodthirsty Terrorists, thereupon decided to remove the sessions of the national representation to St. Cloud."

"Hurrah for the great complot!" shouted Lemercier, opening his mouth for the first time. "And this reason can well be supported by another, by insisting above all that the lives of the Council of Ancients are menaced by their sitting any longer in Paris."

"Yes, yes--on with the 'great conspiracy'!" cried all.

"It is agreed, then," summed up Regnier, "that the discovery of this plot--excellent invention of the police!--is to justify the removal to St. Cloud. Now we must see that our project does not miss fire."

"For that purpose we must call a special session of our colleagues of the Council of Ancients, without informing them of the reason therefor," suggested Lemercier.

"I would observe to my honorable colleague, that, to my mind, it would be a very prudent move not to notify the republican minority which sits with us in the Council. These fellows would ask the most indiscreet questions, the most absurd, ridiculous questions. They wouldn't content themselves with the simple affirmation that there was a plot discovered; they would ask for proofs of the plot! And the details of its discovery! It would be most difficult to answer them!" put in Desmarais.

"Desmarais is right," assented Cornet, another of the conspirators. "My belief is that all of us here present should charge ourselves to go this evening to see our colleagues of the majority personally, let them know the reason for to-morrow morning's extraordinary session, and address letters of notification to them alone. Treason all along the line--our success depends upon it. Is my advice taken?"

"If the republican minority complains about not being notified, we can blame the inspectors of the hall," ventured Lemercier.

"It will be necessary, as a matter of precaution, to double the troops about the Council of Ancients," Lucien Bonaparte advised. "Everything must be foreseen. Squads of police agents should even be mixed with them."

"General Bonaparte, more than anyone else, will serve our ends," answered Regnier. "We shall count on General Bonaparte; say to him that he may count on us."

"Ah, there, Lucien," said Fouche with his withered leer, "if your brother orders the troops to march, how will you, as president of the Fire Hundred, whom you betray with such neatness and despatch, keep those prattlers from screeching like jays when they are dissolved?"

"I shall head off the storm, never fear," laughed Lucien.

"And now, dear colleagues," interrupted Regnier, "let us make haste. The day is nearly gone, and we have not a moment to lose. Let us go on. Who will undertake to prepare the letters of notification?"

"I," volunteered Lahary, their host. "I shall see the inspectors of the hall, who are ours. They are all ready to sell themselves."

"My dear Lucien, you will make it your duty to signify to the General the result of our deliberations?" asked Regnier.

"I am going at once to my brother's, on Victory Street," answered the young man.

"Who," Regnier continued, "will post the inspectors of the hall to have the guards doubled to-morrow?"

"I; and I shall reinforce the posts with spies," replied Cornet.

"My other colleagues and I," Regnier went on, "shall partition among us the task of visiting our friends at once, at their homes, and informing them of the motive of to-morrow's special session."

"We ought above all to caution them to keep the strictest secrecy about the affair," counseled Boulay, from the Meurthe district. "Otherwise it will get noised about, and to-morrow we will see the republican minority march into the Council with their bothersome questions."

"It must be an absolute secret, and I particularly recommend this to our friends," assented Regnier.

"And I," Fouche added, "I shall go teach their lesson to my spies and agents of police, all blackguards and off-scourings, willing to do anything, if they are well paid."

Meanwhile Desmarais, aside, was saying in Lucien's ear: "And so, to-morrow evening the greatest captain of modern times, your illustrious brother, that grand man clad in the dictatorship which he alone can wield, will decide the form of government it pleases him to bestow upon France. We shall behold once more the glorious days of the monarchy."

"How! the dictatorship is to fall on Bonaparte!" cried Councillor Herwin, in surprise.

"We certainly shall not allow General Bonaparte to decide alone on the form of the government!" declared Cornet.

"What a stupid ass this Desmarais is!" said young Bonaparte to himself. "Messieurs," he added aloud, "I give you my word of honor as a man, my brother has no other ambition than to place his genius and his sword at the service of the Council of Ancients. He is outspokenly republican, and has no thoughts of a dictatorship."

Despite the reassuring effect of Lucien Bonaparte's words, his fellow conspirator Regnier thought it wisest also to jump into the breach. "We won't occupy ourselves, dear colleagues," he said, "with a premature question. Let us first turn down the Constitution of the year III, and pronounce the dissolution of the Council of Five Hundred which sustains it. That done, we shall take further counsel; but first let us triumph over the common enemy. And now, gentlemen--till to-morrow!"

To cries of "Till to-morrow!" "Till to-morrow, the day of great events!" the conspirators dispersed.