to get some flour smuggled into Paris from her husband's estate, and had
white-bread made of it secretly, at the pastry-cook's. Had this been
discovered, it would inevitably have prepared the way for all of them to
the scaffold.

Thus, then, young General Buonaparte, or, as he subsequently wrote the
name himself, "Bonaparte," passed quiet days of expectation, hoping
that, should the existing government, so hostile to him, be suppressed
by another, his wishes might be at last fulfilled. These wishes were, by
the way, of a rather unpretending character. "If I could only live here
quietly, at Paris," he once remarked to his friend Bourrienne, "and rent
that pretty little house yonder, opposite to my friends, and keep a
carriage besides, I should be the happiest of men!"

He was quite seriously entertaining the idea of renting the "pretty
little house" in common with his uncle Fesch afterward the cardinal,
when the important events that soon shook Paris once more prevented him,
and the famous 13th Vendémiaire, 1795, again summoned the famous general
away from his meditations to stern practical activity. It was on that
day, the 13th Vendémiaire (October 5th), that there came the outburst of
the storm, the subterranean rumblings of which had been so long
perceptible. The sections of Paris rose against the National Convention
which had given France a new constitution, and so fixed it that two
thirds of the members of the Convention should reappear in the new
legislative body. The sections of Paris, however, were prepared to
accept the new constitution only when it provided that the legislative
body should spring from fresh elections entirely. The Convention, thus
assailed in its ambitious hankering for power, was resolved to stand its
ground, and called upon the representatives who commanded the armed
forces, to defend the republic of their creation. Barras was appointed