In Paris the negotiations had produced some uneasiness. It is now generally said that Fructidor was exclusively the work of Bonaparte: or, rather, that the thirteenth of Vendémiaire was the work of Barras, assisted by Bonaparte; that the eighteenth of Fructidor was the work of Bonaparte, assisted by Barras. This is only a half-truth based on an exaggerated estimate of the facts. While, on the whole, Bonaparte was at the moment pleased with the results of this second political stroke, there was much connected with it utterly repugnant to his wishes. The so-called Fructidorians, among them Mme. de Staël and her friends, were still favorable, in the main, to Bonaparte; but they were thorough republicans, and considered the day as the victory, not of a man, but of a cause. Later Bonaparte expressed sorrow that he had taken any share in arranging it, for the cause and its few supporters proved to be hostile. The wholesale proscription which followed the success of the Directory and its friends destroyed their personal popularity, strengthened the adherents of the monarchy, and weakened the prestige of the army, which was the real support of the new revolution. As far as the repression of conservative royalist and moderate republican influence in the Directory and the chambers was concerned, Bonaparte's interests were identical with those of Barras, Rewbell, and the bigoted Larévellière. He would gladly have ended public agitation in a nation the majority of whom had become royalists again. To this end, he would willingly have broken the presses of the newspapers and have closed the Clichy club: he was anxious for any extreme course necessary to preserve the revolutionary model in government until, in his own phrase, "the pear was ripe" for him. The events of Fructidor, on the one hand, confirmed the constitutionalists in the policy of letting other countries alone, and at the same time put an end to all enthusiasm for republican principles even in the radical executive, necessarily substituting in its place the merest self-interest. This new situation, though not inimical to Bonaparte's interests, made the Fructidorians the most determined opponents of his ambitions.