The next step was to insure the abdication of Gohier and Moulin.

Seeking to entrap Gohier, then the President of the Directory, Josephine invited him to breakfast on the morning of 18th Brumaire; but Gohier, suspecting a snare, remained at his official residence, the Luxemburg Palace.

None the less the Directory was doomed; for the two defenders of the institution had not the necessary quorum for giving effect to their decrees.

Moulin thereupon escaped, and Gohier was kept under guard--by Moreau's soldiery![128] Meanwhile, accompanied by a brilliant group of generals, Bonaparte proceeded to the Tuileries, where the Ancients were sitting; and by indulging in a wordy declamation he avoided taking the oath to the constitution required of a general on entering upon a new command.

In the Council of Five Hundred, Lucien Bonaparte stopped the eager questions and murmurs, on the pretext that the session was only legal at St.Cloud.
There, on the next day (19th Brumaire or 10th November), a far more serious blow was to be struck.