Expedition to
Egypt--Reaches Toulon--Embarks.

Napoleon was received by the ministers assembled at Rastadt with the
respect due to the extraordinary talents which he had already displayed
in negotiation as well as in war. But he stayed among them only two or
three days, for he perceived that the multiplicity of minor arrangements
to be discussed and settled, must, if he seriously entered upon them,
involve the necessity of a long-protracted residence at Rastadt; and he
had many reasons for desiring to be quickly in Paris. His personal
relations with the Directory were of a very doubtful kind, and he
earnestly wished to study with his own eyes the position in which the
government stood towards the various orders of society in the
all-influential capital. He abandoned the conduct of the diplomatic
business to his colleagues, and reached Paris at the beginning of
December. Nor was he without a feasible pretext for this rapidity. On
the 2nd of October, the Directory had announced to the French people
their purpose to carry the war with the English into England itself; the
immediate organisation of a great invading army; and their design to
place it under the command of "Citizen General Buonaparte."

During his brief stay at Rastadt the dictator of Campo-Formio once more
broke out. The Swedish envoy was Count Fersen, the same nobleman who had
distinguished himself in Paris, during the early period of the
Revolution, by his devotion to King Louis and Marie-Antoinette.
Buonaparte refused peremptorily to enter into any negotiation in which a
man, so well known for his hostility to the cause of the Republic,
should have any part; and Fersen instantly withdrew.

On quitting this congress Napoleon was careful to resume, in every
particular, the appearance of a private citizen. Reaching Paris, he
took up his residence in the same small modest house that he had
occupied before he set out for Italy, in the _Rue Chantereine_, which,
about this time, in compliment to its illustrious inhabitant, received
from the municipality the new name of _Rue de la Victoire_. Here he
resumed with his plain clothes his favourite studies and pursuits, and,
apparently contented with the society of his private friends, seemed to
avoid, as carefully as others in his situation might have courted, the
honours of popular distinction and applause. It was not immediately
known that he was in Paris, and when he walked the streets his person
was rarel