'
"The officers followed the general into the drawing-room, and
refreshments were distributed to the soldiers; it was a company of
grenadiers.
"At nine o'clock in the evening, a courier arrived, bearing
dispatches to Bonaparte. At once he, his wife, and his brother,
drove to Paris. The grenadiers were ordered to follow immediately
and in silence." [Footnote: "Memoires secretes," vol. i., p. 26.]
These dispatches, which Bonaparte had received from Paris, brought
him the news that this time the danger was over--that the directors
had abandoned their plan. Some fortunate accident may have warned
them, even as Josephine herself had been warned. The spies who
everywhere tracked Josephine, as well as Bonaparte, had carried to
Gohier intelligence of all the strange movements of the wife of
Bonaparte, and the director at once perceived that she was informed
of the danger which threatened her husband, and that she was bent
upon preventing it.
But now that the plan of the directors had been unveiled, danger
threatened them in their turn, and they immediately adopted measures
to face this new peril. In place of Bonaparte, they must find some
one whom they could arrest, without withdrawing their orders.
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