"_Let those that love me follow me_" said he, and was immediately on horseback again.

"In truth," says De Bourienne, "I know not what would have happened, had the President, when he saw the General retiring, exclaimed, _Grenadiers, let no one go out_: it is my conviction that, instead of sleeping the day after at the Luxembourg, he would have ended his career on the _Place de la Revolution_." The command entrusted to Napoleon was forthwith announced to the soldiery; and they received the intelligence with enthusiasm--the mass of course little comprehending to what, at such a moment, such authority amounted.
The three Directors, meanwhile, who were not in the secret, and who had been much amused with seeing their colleague Sieyes set off on horseback an hour or two earlier from the Luxembourg, had begun to understand what that timely exhibition of the Abbe's awkward horsemanship portended.

One of them, Moulins, proposed to send a battalion to surround Buonaparte's house and arrest him.

Their own guard laughed at them.

Buonaparte was already in the Tuileries, with many troops around him; and the Directorial Guard, being summoned by one of his aides-de-camp, instantly marched thither also, leaving the Luxembourg at his mercy.