request to be permitted to retire from
the service on account of the state of his health, which, he said,
disabled him from mounting his horse, and to the need which he constantly
urged of having two years' rest.

The General-in-Chief was justly of opinion that the tardiness of the
negotiations and the difficulties which incessantly arose were founded on
the expectation of an event which would change the government of France,
and render the chances of peace more favourable to Austria. He still
urgently recommended the arrest of the emigrants, the stopping of the
presses of the royalist journals, which he said were sold to England and
Austria, the suppression of the Clichy Club. This club was held at the
residence of Gerard Desodieres, in the Rue de Clichy. Aubry, was one of
its warmest partisans, and he was the avowed enemy of the revolutionary
cause which Bonaparte advocated at this period. Aubry's conduct at this
time, together with the part he had taken in provoking Bonaparte's
dismissal in 1795, inspired the General with an implacable hatred of him.

Bonaparte despised the Directory, which he accused of weakness,
indecision, pusillanimity, wasteful expenditure, of many errors, and
perseverance in a system degrading to the national glory.

--[The Directory merited those accusations. The following sketches
of two of their official sittings present a singular contrast:

"At the time that the Directory were first installed in the
Luxembourg (27th October 1795)." says M. Baileul, "there was hardly
a single article of furniture in it. In a small room, round a
little broken table, one of the legs of which had given way from
age, on which table they had deposited a quire of letter-paper, and
a writing desk 'a calamet', which luckily they had had the
precaution to bring with them from the Committee of Public safety,
seated on four rush-bottomed chairs, in front of some logs of wood
ill-lighted, the whole borrowed from the porter Dupont; who would
believe that it was in this deplorable condition that the member's
of the new Government, after having examined all the difficulties,
nay, let me add, all the horrors of their situation, resolved to
confront all obstacles, and that they would either deliver France
from the abyss in which she was plunged or perish in the attempt?
They drew up on a sheet of letter-paper the act by which they
declared themselves constituted, and