Leaving Masséna to command the Army of Italy, the First Consul hastened to Milan, where he tarried only long enough to despatch a peace commissioner to Vienna. He then hurried on to Paris. The public had not at first understood that the chief magistrate would so daringly violate the constitution. When his intention to assume military command became clear, there was no audible discontent; the only effect was to create a coterie about Talleyrand which discussed the consequences if the daring adventurer were to be killed. While deliberating whether Carnot or Lafayette should be the coming man, their session was indefinitely adjourned by receipt of the news and by the speedy return of Bonaparte. His journey through the provinces was a continuous ovation; every town had its triumphal arch. By his command the reception which Paris gave to the man whom victory was fast making her idol was ostentatiously kept within moderate limits, but on the evening of his return--July third, 1800--the entire city burst into one great illumination. Every one was talking of Hannibal and the Alps, of the army climbing like chamois and toiling like oxen, of the hospice of St. Bernard with its devoted brothers and their sagacious dogs, of precipices and avalanches, and of the climax to all these toils in the plains of Italy, not forgetting the touching loss of the gallant and handsome Desaix. The hour for display was past, the time for solid achievement had arrived. First, if possible, the peace so ardently desired must be secured. In a letter from Milan to the Emperor Francis, explaining why it was Austria's interest to abandon England, and become the friend of France, on the old terms of Campo Formio, Bonaparte wrote: "Let us give peace and quiet to the present generation. If future generations are foolish enough to fight, very well; they will learn after a few years of warfare how to grow wise and live in peace." But Austria, having just bargained for a new subsidy from the apparently inexhaustible coffers of England, could not consider a separate peace, and the cabinet sent an agent with very limited powers to see whether France might not be brought to make some concessions which would be useful toward a general pacification. The personage chosen was one of those who seem by accident to enter now and then the solemn councils of history in order to enliven their gravity by blunders and mock heroism. The Count of St. Julien, an Austrian diplomatist attached after the fall of Genoa to the army, had been chosen by Bonaparte to carry his proposition for a general armistice to Vienna. It was he who was sent back to Milan with an Austrian counter-proposition, accepting the armistice, but suggesting clearer definition of the terms on which peace was to be negotiated than could be found in the treaty of Campo Formio, a document which intervening circumstances and new engagements had rendered impossible of execution.