and Austria, the suppression of the Clichy Club.  This club was held at the residence of Gerard Desodieres, in the Rue de Clichy.  Aubry, was one of its warmest partisans, and he was the avowed enemy of the revolutionary cause which Bonaparte advocated at this period.  Aubry’s conduct at this time, together with the part he had taken in provoking Bonaparte’s dismissal in 1795, inspired the General with an implacable hatred of him.

Bonaparte despised the Directory, which he accused of weakness, indecision, pusillanimity, wasteful expenditure, of many errors, and perseverance in a system degrading to the national glory.

   —­[The Directory merited those accusations.  The following sketches
   of two of their official sittings present a singular contrast: 

“At the time that the Directory were first installed in the Luxembourg (27th October 1795).” says M. Baileul, “there was hardly a single article of furniture in it.  In a small room, round a little broken table, one of the legs of which had given way from age, on which table they had deposited a quire of letter-paper, and a writing desk ‘a calamet’, which luckily they had had the precaution to bring with them from the Committee of Public safety, seated on four rush-bottomed chairs, in front of some logs of wood ill-lighted, the whole borrowed from the porter Dupont; who would believe that it was in this deplorable condition that the member’s of the new Government, after having examined all the difficulties, nay, let me add, all the horrors of their situation, resolved to confront all obstacles, and that they would either deliver France from the abyss in which she was plunged or perish in the attempt?  They drew up on a sheet of letter-paper the act by which they declared themselves constituted, and immediately forwarded it to the Legislative Bodies.”

And the Comte de La Vallette, writing to M. Cuvillier Fleury, says:  “I saw our five kings, dressed in the robes of Francis I., his hat, his pantaloons, and his lace:  the face of La Reveilliere looked like a cork upon two pins, with the black and greasy hair of Clodion.  M. de Talleyrand, in pantaloons of the colour of wine dregs, sat in a folding chair at the feet of the Director Barras, in the Court of the Petit Luxembourg, and gravely presented to his sovereigns as ambassador from the Grand Duke of Tuscany, while the French were eating his master’s dinner, from the soup to the cheese.  At the right hand there were fifty musicians and singers of the Opera, Laine, Lays, Regnault, and the actresses, not all dead of old age, roaring a patriotic cantata to the music of Mehul.  Facing them, on another elevation, there were two hundred young and beautiful women, with their arms and bosoms bare, all in ecstasy at the majesty of our Pentarchy and the happiness of the Republic.  They also wore tight flesh-coloured pantaloons, with rings on their toes.  That was a sight that never will be seen again.