A sufficient military force having been made ready, it was determined at a secret meeting of the Bonapartists, held on the fifteenth of Brumaire (November seventh), that the blow should be struck three days later. To that end the Ancients were to meet, according to the program, on the seventeenth of Brumaire in the morning, and summon both assemblies to hold a session on the eighteenth at St. Cloud. Under a provision of the constitution, whenever an amendment to that document was to be considered, the bodies were to sit outside the walls of Paris. This move would naturally excite considerable suspicion among the uninitiated; and although there might be no disorder, there would certainly be much heated discussion in the streets. Still greater was the danger which lay in the temper of the troops. Enthusiastic for what they felt to be still the republic, every appearance of offering violence to any and all avowed republicans like those who sat among the Five Hundred must be avoided. The solution of this latter problem was really the key to the whole combination. Success would depend entirely on the momentary instinct of plain, honest republican soldiers taken unawares. Minor troubles there were also. Sieyès, sensitive under the evident determination of Bonaparte to use him only so long as he was necessary, became restive, and it required the nicest balancing of interests to keep him temporarily in the traces. It was a time of terrible anxiety to the conspirators. Talleyrand never forgot a scene which took place at his house in the Rue Taitbout a few nights before the crisis. He and Bonaparte were still deep in conversation at about one in the morning, when they heard the rumbling of carriage-wheels and the ring of cavalry hoofs in the street. Suddenly both ceased; the cavalcade had stopped at the door. Bonaparte turned pale, and Talleyrand also, as they paused and listened, fully convinced that both were to be arrested. The latter blew out the candles, and hurried through a passageway to gain a view of the street. After some delay he discovered that the carriage of a gambling-house keeper, returning under police escort from the Palais Royal with his spoils, had broken down. His fears relieved, he returned to joke with Bonaparte about the scare. Before the appointed day, however, everything which master-schemers could foresee was carefully adjusted. The apparent resurrection of Jacobinism was actually the last appearance of its ghost; for the Directory, shorn of all prestige, was divided and shaky; the army, republican to the core, was weary with its inefficiency and furious with its bankruptcy; the mass of the nation, conservative and royalist, despaired of a restoration, and, sick of war, were for the moment in a humor to accept any strong government. The majority of the administration, the nation, and the army were, therefore, in readiness, while the numerous malcontents in each were at least temporarily silenced.