Meantime Paris, well named the Gay City, had assumed something of its former aspect. There was marriage and giving in marriage, the theatres and other places of amusement opened anew, and the infallible barometer of business began to rise. Almost everywhere the half-trained armies had been victorious. Apparently “better times” had begun. The change in the political weather, although clearer, was not so noticeable. To be sure a constitution had been framed by the National Convention and was given to the world on the 22nd September 1795, but it did not give the universal satisfaction hoped for by the more enthusiastic of its supporters. In certain minor respects the Legislative Body upon which they had decided was not unlike our own Parliament, in so far as it consisted of two Houses, the lower chamber being called the Council of Five Hundred and the upper chamber the Council of Ancients. The former drew up the laws, the latter passed, adjusted, or rejected them. From the two Councils a Directory of five men vested with the executive power was to be chosen, one of whom was to retire for re-election every year. Having decreed that one-third of the members of both Councils should also retire in the same way, either to be re-elected or to surrender their places to others, the Convention stirred up a hornet’s nest for itself by deciding that two-thirds of its members should be retained in the new Legislature, whereas it had originally assembled for the purpose of drawing up a constitution and not to govern. Girondists and supporters of the Mountain alike clung tenaciously to office, anxious to retain the spoils of victory. The members of the Convention soon found that public opinion was against them. “This measure,” says Baron de Frénilly, “aroused general indignation, for nobody, apart from its accomplices, wished that it should possess either power or impunity.”