Here and there were members of the councils and generals of the army who were willing enough to check the conspiracy of Napoleon, if they had only known how. With the Directory smashed, the councils divided and removed, the troops on Napoleon’s side, and Paris indifferent, how could Bernadotte, Jourdan, and Augereau do anything? They could hold dismal little meetings behind closed doors, discuss the situation, and decide that Napoleon must be checked. But who was to bell the cat? At a meeting held by a few deputies and Bernadotte in the house of Salicetti, it was agreed that they should go to St. Cloud next morning, get Bernadotte appointed commander of the legislative guard, and that he should then combat the conspirators. Salicetti betrayed this secret to Napoleon; and, through Fouché, he frustrated the plan by adroitly detaining its authors in Paris next morning. To make assurance doubly sure, orders were issued that any one attempting to harangue the troops should be cut down. Sieyès advised that the forty or fifty members of the councils most violently opposed to the Bonaparte programme be arrested during the night. Napoleon refused. “I will not break the oath I took this morning.” By noon of the 19th of Brumaire (November 10, 1799) the members of the councils were at St. Cloud, excited, suspicious, indignant. Even among the Ancients, a reaction against Napoleon had taken place. Many of the members had supported him on the 18th of Brumaire because they believed he would be satisfied with a place in the Directory. Since then further conferences and rumors had convinced them that he aimed at a dictatorship. Besides, those deputies who had been tricked out of attending the session of the day before, resented the wrong, and were ready to resist the tricksters. During the couple of hours which (owing to some blunder) they had to wait for their halls to be got ready, the members of the two councils had full opportunity to intermingle, consult, and measure the strength of the opposition. When at length they met in their respective chambers, they were in the frame of mind which produces that species of disturbance known as a parliamentary storm. Napoleon and his officers were grimly waiting in another room of the palace for the cut-and-dried programme to be proposed and voted. Sieyès had a coach and six ready at the gates to flee in case of mishap.