The Convention was aware of all that was taking place, but was also helpless to correct the trouble. Having abolished the powerful and terrible Committee of Safety, which had conducted its operations with such success as attends remorseless vigor, it was found necessary on August ninth to reconstruct something similar to meet the new crisis. At the same time the spirit of the hour was propitiated by forming sixteen other committees to control the action of the central one. Such a dispersion of executive power was a virtual paralysis of action, but it was to be only temporary, they would soon centralize their strength in an efficient way. The constitution was adopted only a fortnight later, on August twenty-second. Immediately the sections of Paris began to display irritation at the limitations set to their choice of new representatives. They had many sympathizers in the provinces, and the extreme reactionaries from the Revolution were jubilant. Fortunately for France, Carnot was temporarily retained to control the department of war. He was not removed until the following March. When General Buonaparte reached Paris, and went to dwell in the mean and shabby lodgings which his lean purse compelled him to choose, he found the city strangely metamorphosed. Animated by a settled purpose not to accept the position assigned to him in the Army of the West, and, if necessary, to defy his military superiors, his humor put him out of all sympathy with the prevalent gaiety. Bitter experience had taught him that in civil war the consequences of victory and defeat are alike inglorious. In the fickleness of public opinion the avenging hero of to-day may easily become the reprobated outcast of to-morrow. What reputation he had gained at Toulon was already dissipated in part; the rest might easily be squandered entirely in Vendée. He felt and said that he could wait. But how about his daily bread?