At that moment Bonaparte, with his staff, appeared at the door and a sudden silence fell upon the place. The scene appalled him. The bravery of the general is different from the personal courage of the soldier in the face of physical danger, and both are unlike the pluck of him who defies the law. The latter Bonaparte never had. For a moment he was pale; but, gathering resolution by a mighty effort, he spoke in disjointed but rudely eloquent phrase. They were on a volcano, he said. He was no Cæsar or Cromwell, but a plain soldier living quietly in Paris, who had been called unawares to save his country. If he had been a usurper, he would have called not on the legislature, but on the soldiers of Italy. It was the duty of those present to save liberty and equality--"and the constitution," cried a voice. "The constitution!" was his answer. "You violated it on the eighteenth of Fructidor; you violated it on the twenty-second of Floréal; you violated it on the thirtieth of Prairial. The constitution! All factions invoke it, and it has been violated by all. It is despised by everybody; it can no longer save us, because it commands the respect of nobody." He then proceeded to ask for the powers necessary in the emergency, promising to lay them down when his work was done. "What are the pressing dangers?" said some one. What were they, indeed? If he must speak, he would. "I declare," he cried, "that Barras and Moulins have invited me to head a party in order to overthrow all men of liberal ideas." The clumsy falsehood produced a storm. Was this the Jacobin conspiracy they had been told of--Barras the aristocrat and Moulins the democrat conspiring together! They wanted details.
In the interval of speaking, the orator had found his cue again, and at once launched out, not into the asked-for details, but into a tornado of language, abusing the constitution and the Five Hundred, and at the same time adroitly threatening that if the old cry of outlaw were raised against him, he would call on the grenadiers whose caps he saw, on the soldiers whose bayonets were in view. "Remember that I walk with the goddess of fortune, accompanied by the god of war!" "General," whispered Bourrienne in his ear, "you no longer know what you are saying." The president of the Ancients was at his wit's end. How could the council, eager as they were to do so, grant the general's demands on such a showing as this? A third time came calls from the benches for details of the plot which made necessary the contemplated measures. And a third time Bonaparte's gift of specious prevarication failed. He could think of nothing but Barras and Moulins; but now, in mentioning their names once more, he added that what made them dangerous was that they had expressed what was almost universally desired; otherwise they would be no worse than a very large number of others who were at heart of the same mind. "If liberty perish," he cried, "you will be responsible to the universe, to posterity, to France, and to your families." It sounded like an anti-climax and left his auditors perfectly cold. Therewith he was virtually dragged from the room by his dismayed companions. The preconcerted program was then carried out, and a vote of confidence in Bonaparte was passed. To retrieve the blunders of his speech, a revised version, of the same general tenor, but more as it should have been, was next day printed by "authority."