Their surmises were correct.
Buonaparte, on his arrival at Paris, witnessed the closing scenes of the reign of Louis XVI.

On June 20th he saw the crowd burst into the Tuileries, when for some hours it insulted the king and queen.

Warmly though he had espoused the principles of the Revolution, his patrician blood boiled at the sight of these vulgar outrages, and he exclaimed: "Why don't they sweep off four or five hundred of that _canaille_ with cannon?
The rest would then run away fast enough." The remark is significant.

If his brain approved the Jacobin creed, his instincts were always with monarchy.

His career was to reconcile his reason with his instincts, and to impose on weary France the curious compromise of a revolutionary Imperialism.
On August 10th, from the window of a shop near the Tuileries, he looked down on the strange events which dealt the _coup de grace_ to the dying monarchy.