Napoleon had, on many occasions, expressed his dislike of the arbitrary course pursued by the Directory. In private he expressed, in the strongest terms, his horror of Jacobin cruelty and despotism. "The Directors," said he "can not long retain their position. They know not how to do any thing for the imagination of the nation." It is said that the Directors, at last, were so much annoyed by his censure that they seriously contemplated his arrest and applied to Fouche for that purpose. The wily minister of police replied, "Napoleon Bonaparte is not the man to be arrested; neither is Fouche the man who will undertake to arrest him." When Bourrienne inquired if he were really determined to risk his fate on the Expedition to Egypt, "Yes!" he replied, "if I remain here, it will be necessary for me to overturn this miserable government, and make myself king. But we must not think of that yet. The pear is not yet ripe. I have sounded, but the time has not yet come. I must first dazzle these gentlemen by my exploits." One of his last acts before embarkation was to issue a humane proclamation to the military commission at Toulon urging a more merciful construction of one of the tyrannical edicts of the Directory against the emigrants. "I exhort you, citizens," said he, "when the law presents at your tribunal old men and females, to declare that, in the midst of war, Frenchmen respect the aged and the women, even of their enemies. The soldier who signs a sentence against one incapable of bearing arms is a coward." There was perhaps not another man in France, who would have dared thus to oppose the sanguinary measures of government. This benevolent interposition met however with a response in the hearts of the people, and added a fresh laurel to his brow. On the morning of the 19th of May, 1798, just as the sun was rising over the blue waves of the Mediterranean the fleet got under way. Napoleon, with Eugene, embarked in the Orient, an enormous ship of one hundred and twenty guns. It was a brilliant morning and the unclouded sun perhaps never shone upon a more splendid scene. The magnificent armament extended over a semi-circle of not less than eighteen miles. The parting between Napoleon and Josephine is represented as having been tender and affecting in the extreme. She was very anxious to accompany him, but he deemed the perils to which they would be exposed, and the hardships they must necessarily endure, far too formidable for a lady to encounter. Josephine stood upon a balcony, with her eyes blinded with tears, as she waved her adieus to Napoleon, and watched the receding fleet, till the lessening sails disappeared beneath the distant horizon. The squadron sailed first to Genoa, thence to Ajaccio, and thence to Civita Vecchia, to join the convoys collected in those ports. The signal was then given for the whole fleet to bear away, as rapidly as possible, for Malta.