"The Directory see me here with uneasiness, notwithstanding all my efforts to throw myself into the shade. Neither the Directory nor I can do any thing to oppose that tendency to a more centralized government, which is so manifestly inevitable. Our dreams of a republic were the illusions of youth. Since the ninth Thermidor,[D] the Republican instinct has grown weaker every day. The efforts of the Bourbons, of foreigners, sustained by the remembrance of the year 1793, had re-united against the Republican system an imposing majority. But for the thirteenth Vendemiaire[E] and the eighteenth Fructidor,[F] this majority would have triumphed a long time ago. The feebleness, the dissensions of the Directory, have done the rest. It is upon me that all eyes are fixed to-day. To-morrow they will be fixed upon some one else. While waiting for that other one to appear, if he is to appear, my interest tells me that no violence should be done to fortune. We must leave to fortune an open field. [Footnote D: 9th Thermidor, 28th of July, 1794. This was the date of the overthrow of Robespierre, and of the termination of the Reign of Terror. The enormous atrocities perpetrated under the name of the Republic had excited general distrust of republican institutions.] [Footnote E: 13th Vendemiaire, 5th of October, 1795, when Napoleon quelled the insurgent sections.] [Footnote F: 18th Fructidor, 4th of September, 1797. On this day the majority of the French Directory overthrew the minority, who were in favor of monarchical institutions. Sixty-three Deputies were banished for conspiring to introduce monarchy. Both councils renewed their oath of hatred against royalty.] "Many persons hope still in the Republic. Perhaps they have reason. I leave for the East, with all means for success. If my country has need of me--if the number of those who think with Talleyrand, Sieyes, and Roederer should increase, should war be resumed, and prove unfriendly to the arms of France, I shall return more sure of the opinion of the nation. If, on the contrary, the war should be favorable to the Republic, if a military statesman like myself should rise and gather around him the wishes of the people, very well, I shall render, perhaps, still greater services to the world in the East than he can do. I shall probably overthrow English domination, and shall arrive more surely at a maritime peace, than by the demonstrations which the Directory makes upon the shores of the Channel.