"The Representatives of the People in charge of the Army of Paris and of the Army of the Interior "Order General Dumas to present himself at once at Paris to receive instructions from the Government. "J. J. B. DELMAS, "LAPORTE." What, then, had happened in Paris? We must explain. The 13th Vendémiaire had taken place. Bonaparte had fired grapeshot on the rebels on the steps of the church of Saint-Roch. The Convention had settled on my father to defend it, my father was not in Paris. Barras proposed Bonaparte, and Bonaparte was accepted. That momentous hour that comes, so people say, once at least in the life of every man, and decides his future, had struck inauspiciously for him. My father accepted the position instantly, but he did not arrive till the 14th. He found the rebels conquered, and Bonaparte general of the Army of the Interior. This is the certificate that was given my father; we have copied this precious document from the original. "LIBERTY--JUSTICE--EQUALITY. "We, general officers and others, certify and attest that citizen Alexandre Dumas, general in the army, arrived in Paris on the 14th of Vendémiaire, and that he immediately joined his brothers-in-arms in defence of the National Convention against the attack of the rebels; who have this day laid down their arms. "PARIS, _14th Brumaire, Year IV of the French Republic._ _"Signed_: J. J. B. DELMAS; LAPORTE; GASTON; BERNARD, Aide-de-Camp; HUCHÉ, General of Division; TH. ARTEL, Captain Adjutant--General; BERTIN, Brigadier-General; PAREIN, General of Division; ROINAY, _Commissaire-Ordonnateur._ Then, at the bottom of all these signatures, in his illegible writing, every letter of which was like a Gordian knot, the man who was going to weld the Revolution by bloodshed wrote these three lines:-- "Certified correct. "BUONAPARTE, Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Interior." He dropped the _u_ which Italianised his name three months later, and then signed himself _Bonaparte._ It was doubtless during these three months that he had his Macbeth-like apparition, when the three witches addressed him, "Hail! thou shalt become commander-in-chief; Hail! thou shalt become First Consul; Hail! thou shalt become Emperor." The Convention which Bonaparte saved, ended its three years' session on the 26th October (1792), by a decree of amnesty for all the Revolutionary misdemeanants who had not been concerned in theft or assassination. Then, when it had delivered 8370 decrees, it dissolved or rather reorganised itself, to reappear under the triple form of Council of Elders, Council of Five Hundred, and the Directory. The five directors were: La Reveillère-Lepaux, Letourneur de la Manche, Rewbell, Barras, and Carnot. They were, every one of them, members of the Convention. Each of them had voted for the death of the king.