' My presentiments have come true; The fools have lost Italy! All the fruits of our victories are gone. I must leave Egypt in order to save France.'
Having taken his decision, he acted with speed and secrecy. He told only Berthier and Gantheaume; ordering the latter to prepare the two frigates and two small supply ships with enough food for a two-month voyage. On August 5th he left Alexandria, on the 10th he arrived in Cairo. There, he gave out that he intended to carry out an inspection of Desaix's force in Upper Egypt. A few days later he announced a change of plan: he was going to make a tour of the Delta. Meanwhile Bourrienne had collected all the people Bonaparte intended to take with him, but it was not until they reached Alexandria on the 22nd that any of them were told that they were going home to France.
Kleber had been at Damietta and Bonaparte had written, asking him to meet him for a conference at Rosetta. But with the duplicity that was typical of his methods the Corsican had never intended to keep the appointment. To escape protests and reproaches, he had simply sent a letter to await Kleber's arrival. It appointed him General-in-Chief, with powers to surrender to the British, but only if the ravages of the plague became so bad that the Army became incapable of resistance. The unfortunate Kleber had been left to find out for himself that the Army was ten million francs in debt and that Bonaparte had taken with him every sou of ready money.
When Roger asked Bourrienne for the news that had been gleaned from the papers sent by Sir Sidney Smith, the Chef de Cabinet told him of the serious reverses the French had met with in the neighbourhood of the Rhine and from north to south in Italy. Roger had already learned most of this from Sarodopulous, but there was later news about Switzerland. Matters were going badly for the French there also. Mass£na had been compelled to relinquish the Grissons; then, on May 2'th, two Austrian armies, joining forces, had brought such a weight of numbers against him that he had been driven back to the line of the river Limmat and Zurich.
Bourrienne, with intense indignation, gave an account of the murder of the French envoys at Rastatt and went on to speak of affairs in Paris. In mid-May the retirement by ballot of one of the Directors had become due and this time the lot had fallen on Jean-Francois Rewbell. The handsome, corrupt, licentious aristocrat Barras had been the most prominent figure in the Directory, right from its formation; but it was the coarse, ruthless, dyed-in-the-wool revolutionary Rewbell who had managed it and, time after time, frustrated the attempts of the Moderate majority in the Legislative Assembly to restore some degree of true liberty to the French people.
Rewbell had been replaced by the Abb£ Sieyes, one of the strangest figures of the Revolution. He had become prominent in its earliest days and had remained so ever since. When asked, in after years, what he had done in the Revolution he replied, 'I survived.' For anyone who had been one of the original leaders that was no small feat. A few others, such as Talleyrand, had done so, but only by going into exile during the worst years of the Terror. Sieyes, the most subtle of intriguers, had, by changing his coat a dozen times, not only kept his head on his shoulders but occupied some post of importance in every successive Government.
He was not a bloodthirsty man but had an intense hatred of the aristocracy and was incredibly vain of his intellectual powers. Above all he fancied himself as a drafter of Constitutions, although many of his ideas on the subject were impracticable. On the fall of Robespierre he had been among the first chosen by the rump Convention to be one of the new governing body of five—the Directory. But as his proposals for a new Constitution had been rejected he had, in a huff, refused office.
This change in the personnel of the Directory was of far greater importance than any which had preceded it, and later in the day Roger pondered over its possible results. As Sieyes was a renegade and an atheist, his appointment would not lead to greater religious toleration and, as a revolutionary, he would, no doubt, support the Directory in their policy of continuing to repress individual liberty. But he was far too careful of his own skin to act as Rewbell would have done in a crisis and back his opinions with ruthless force. In consequence, this change in the Directory must greatly weaken it; and for a long time past it had been hated and despised by both the great mass of the people and the Liberal majority which sat, powerless under its rule, in the Legislative Assembly. Therefore, it now needed only a strong man to play Cromwell in order to put an end to the Directory.
Roger had no doubt that Bonaparte must be well aware of this. Overtures to lead a coup d'etat to overthrow the Directory had been made to him in the spring of '98 and Talleyrand had told Roger that the little Corsican had refrained only because, being an extremely astute politician, he had decided that the time was not yet ripe. Instead he had gone off to Egypt, with the possibility of carving for himself an Empire in the East while time worked for him in France. He had failed in the first, but time had marched on just the same and now the plum looked ripe for the picking.
As Roger thought of this he realized that a sudden change had taken place in his own mentality. He had gone to Egypt only because Talleyrand had virtually forced him to. While there he had twice furnished Nelson with valuable information about Bonaparte's intentions. But that had given him no great satisfaction. It was not to secure information about the situation of an Army operating three thousand miles from England that Mr. Pitt had sent him to Paris. The work in which he had specialized for so long and in which he had been so successful was using his wide acquaintance with enemies in high places to assess the future policy of their Governments. To be back in Paris again and, perhaps, be able, to some degree, to influence events in favour of his country was a very different matter from remaining virtually useless and cut off from all the amenities of life in Egypt.
One thing seemed certain: Bonaparte's return to Paris would lead to a crisis of some kind, and the more Roger speculated on its possibly far-reaching results the more eager he became for the voyage to be over.
For some days, and particularly at nights, he was haunted by thoughts of Zanthe. When the news reached her that Bonaparte had decamped, taking his finest Generals and his personal Staff with him, she would realize that Roger was with them and on his way back to France; but she could not be expected to guess that he had not had the option of refusing to leave her, or even the opportunity to send her a message. She could only suppose that, having been given the chance, he had callously deserted her. That worried him even more than having lost her; although at times such was his feeling for her that he almost wished he had been left behind to marry her as they had planned.
It was on the third day out that, up on the quarter-deck, Bonaparte suddenly asked him, ' What happened to your Princess? '
Roger told him; but the Corsican only gave a grunt, then said, '1, too, have had to deprive myself of much happiness by leaving behind in Cairo my little Bellilotte. She implored me to take her with me, but I refused. We have to face the fact that we may be captured by the English. Most of the English sailors have been without women for many months and I could not bear to think what might happen to her if she fell into their hands.'
Roger was so shocked by this slur on British chivalry that only long habit prevented him from making his leanings suspect by entering on an angry defence of his countrymen. That he would have been amply justified was proved some months later, when the Corsican's violet-eyed mistress endeavoured to follow him to France in a blockade-runner. The ship was captured by the English. They delighted in her company, entertained her royally and went out of their way to set her safely ashore in France.