social circles, he devoted himself to an analytical study of the people and their institutions. The revocation in 1796 of the decree pronouncing him an emigrant was obtained by Mme. de Staël's influence, and he immediately returned to France. It is characteristic of him that during these years he was successively a representative of the King, of Danton, and of the Directory.

To the Institute of France, of which learned body he had been made a member during his absence, he presented on his return his brilliant studies of colonization in general, and of the respective relations between the United States and the rival powers of France and England. But politics, not literature, was his trade. At once he began to study the situation of his own land, and observed with profound penetration both the instability of the government and the straits of the Directory. Accordingly, though nominally their man, and accepting from them the ministry of foreign affairs, he attached himself at once to Bonaparte, in the hope, as he explains in his memoirs, of using the conqueror to restore the monarchy. The latter had the perspicacity to encourage the relation, and from that moment possessed in the very center of affairs an able and congenial representative. It is known that Talleyrand's public letters to Bonaparte were accompanied with private supplements which often ran in a sense quite opposite to that of the main sheet. For instance, nothing could be more satisfactory to the directors than his open account of Fructidor; but it is known that the private letter mercilessly analyzed the situation as impossible and unstable. Attempting a corrupt bargain with the American envoys, Pinckney, Marshall, and Gerry, in regard to the protection of American commerce, he was mercilessly exposed by the indignant ministers, and finally compelled by public opinion to resign from his office. But even in disgrace he continued in Paris as the unscrupulous prime mover of French politics, until restored to power by Bonaparte, when he again accepted the position from which he had been driven, and successfully elaborated in practice the schemes of his superior.

There were, however, two other men, Barras and Sieyès, who, after the eighteenth of Fructidor, were left in an unendurable position. Both these men were also boundlessly venal. The former was Bonaparte's "ancient friend"; Fructidor made him the general's creature. Like Talleyrand, both were for the present the devoted satraps of a master who could pay not only with prospective power, but with present cash; ultimately they also hoped to use him for their own ends in the restoration of monarchy. Sieyès, now president of the Ancients, was both weak and vain. But, posing as an oracular constitution-maker, he was admitted as such to the councils of Talleyrand and Barras. Both his pride and his interests being thus engaged, he had apparently become as ardent a follower of Bonaparte as were the other two. Rewbell was so occupied with the foreign policy of the Revolution, and Merlin with the internal administration on Jacobin lines, that neither one nor the other gave any thought to the ulterior consequences of Fructidor. François de Neufchâteau was posing as the wit of the epoch, Larévellière was its prophet; neither was of even the slightest importance. Augereau, seeing himself duped by the disbanding of the Rhine army, had been disenchanted, and was for a while the relentless enemy of his old chief. A few mediocrities both in the army and in politics were in sympathy with Augereau; but as England was the one foe left, the general of the Army of England was virtually the commander of the whole. Not one of the division generals disobeyed his orders.