to Miot de Melito: 'The Parisian lawyers who have been put in the
Directory understand nothing of government. They are mean-minded
men ... I doubt that we can stay friends much longer. They are jealous
of me. I can no longer obey. I have tasted command and I would not
know how to give it up.' The appetite for power shows Napoleon already
not letting the right hand know what the left hand was doing, for a month
earlier he had written to Talleyrand from Milan that he was so exhausted
he could barely get into the saddle and needed two years' rest and. recuperation.
On r6 November 1797 Napoleon left Milan to head northwards
through Switzerland to the conference at Rastadt. After travelling via
Chambery, Geneva and Berne he arrived at Rastadt only to be advised
that the Directory wished to confer with him urgently in Paris about the
proposed invasion of England. Napoleon tarried four days, then sent
word on 30 November that he would be leaving within forty-eight hours.
He was travelling without his wife, for Josephine had seen another
opportunity to be alone with Hippolyte Charles. She pretended she
wanted to visit Rome, and Napoleon had arranged for a quasi-regal
reception there by the peripatetic Joseph, who had meanwhile been
appointed by the Directory as their envoy to the Holy See. But as soon as
Napoleon left for Turin on r6 November, Josephine 'changed her mind'
about Rome. She got Marmont to accompany her instead to Venice,
where she was feted like royalty by more than roo,ooo onlookers. To the
surprise of no one who knew Madame Bonaparte well, by pure
coincidence also in Venice was Hippolyte Charles.
However, Josephine was now skating on dangerously thin ice. At
Rastadt, Napoleon's spies informed him of what was afoot. There were
rumours that Charles was to be executed by firing squad. In fact
Napoleon curtly ordered Charles to report to Paris at once and await
further orders. But the ingenious Josephine was not so easily baulked.
She contrived to intercept the courier bearing these orders - none other
than her old friend General Berthier - at an Alpine wayside inn and got
the orders rewritten so that Charles was granted a three-month leave in
Paris to attend to family business. Josephine then proceeded at a snail's
pace through southern France while Charles, alerted, rode several post
horses into the ground from Milan to Lyons in pursuit of her. He finally
caught up with her at Nevers on 28 December. For five days and nights,
proceeding as slowly as possible towards Paris, they made love, so that it
was 2 January 1798 before Josephine finally arrived in Paris.
She was a month overdue, for Napoleon, who had arrived in Paris at 5
p.m. on 5 December after travelling through eastern France incognito,