Under the Directory Lafayette had been an exile, forbidden to enter French territory. But with Napoleon in power conditions changed. Lafayette felt the greatest gratitude to the man who had freed him from Olmutz, he had the deepest admiration for the general who had won so many brilliant victories for France, and he was disposed to believe that Napoleon really intended to secure liberty for the country. When he heard of Napoleon’s return from Egypt he wrote to his wife, who was in France at the time, “People jealous of Bonaparte see in me his future opponent; they are right, if he wishes to suppress liberty; but if he have the good sense to promote it, I will suit him in every respect. I do not believe him to be so foolish as to wish to be only a despot.” He also sent a letter to Napoleon, in which he said, “The love of liberty and country would suffice for your arrival to fill me with joy and hope. To this desire for public happiness is joined a lively and profound sentiment for my liberator. Your greetings to the prisoners of Olmutz have been sent to me by her whose life I owe to you. I rejoice in all my obligations to you, citizen-general, and in the happy conviction that to cherish your glory and to wish your success is an act of civism as much as of attachment and gratitude.” Friends procured the exile a passport and he returned to Paris. But Bonaparte was not glad to have him come back; the First Consul was in reality no friend of the principles of the Revolution, and he felt that such a man as Lafayette must inevitably oppose him and might even prejudice the people against him. He showed his anger unreservedly when friends told him of Lafayette’s arrival, and the friends immediately advised the latter that he had better return to the Netherlands. But Lafayette, having made up his mind to come, would not budge now. “You should be sufficiently acquainted with me,” he said to the men who brought him the news from the First Consul, “to know that this imperious and menacing tone would suffice to confirm me in the course which I have taken.” And he added, “It would be very amusing for me to be arrested at night by the National Guard of Paris and imprisoned in the Temple the next day by the restorer of the principles of 1789.” Madame Lafayette called on the First Consul, who received her kindly. She pleaded so eloquently for her husband, pointing out his natural desire to be in France, that Napoleon’s anger vanished. He said that he regretted Lafayette’s return only because it would “retard his progress toward the reëstablishment of Lafayette’s principles, and would force him to take in sail.” “You do not understand me, madame,” he continued, “but General Lafayette will understand me; and not having been in the midst of affairs, he will feel that I can judge better than he. I therefore conjure him to avoid all publicity; I leave it to his patriotism.” Madame Lafayette answered that that was her husband’s wish.