While the Directory were thus disunited among themselves, the nation showed their dissatisfaction openly, and particularly in the two bodies of representatives. The majority indeed of the Council of Elders adhered to the Directory, many of that body belonging to the old republican partisans. But in the more popularly composed Council of Five Hundred, the opposition to the government possessed a great majority, all of whom were decidedly against the Directory, and most of them impressed with the wish of restoring, upon terms previously to be adjusted, the ancient race of legitimate monarchs. This body of persons so thinking, was much increased by the number of emigrants, who obtained, on various grounds, permission to return to their native country after the fall of Robespierre. The forms of civil life began now to be universally renewed; and, as had been the case in France at all times, excepting during the bloody Reign of Terror, women of rank, beauty, talent, and accomplishments, began again to resume their places in society, and their saloons or boudoirs were often the scene of deep political discourse, of a sort which in Britain is generally confined to the cabinet, library, or dining-parlour. The wishes of many, or most of these coteries, were in favour of royalty; the same feelings were entertained by the many thousands who saw no possible chance of settling the nation on any other model; and there is little doubt, that had France been permitted at that moment an uninfluenced choice, the Bourbon family would have been recalled to the throne by the great majority of the French people. But, for reasons mentioned elsewhere, the military were the decided opponents of the Bourbons, and the purchasers of national domains, through every successive sale which might have taken place, were deeply interested against their restoration. Numbers might be on the side of the Royalists; but physical force, and the influence of wealth and of the monied interest, were decidedly against them. [Sidenote: PICHEGRU.]