To that quarter Buonaparte had already sent forward Berthier, the most confidential of his military friends, and other officers of the highest skill, with orders to reconnoitre the various passes in the great Alpine chain, and make every other preparation for the movement, of which they alone were, as yet, in the secret.
The statesmen who ventured, even after Brumaire, to oppose the investiture of Buonaparte with the whole power of the state, had, at first (as we have seen) attempted to confine him to the military department; or so arrange it that his orders, as to civil affairs, should, at least, not be absolute.

Failing in this, they then proposed that the Chief Consul should be incapable of heading an army in the field, without abdicating previously his magistracy; and to their surprise, Napoleon at once acceded to a proposition which, it had been expected, would rouse his indignation.

It now turned out how much the saving clause in question was worth.

The Chief Consul could not, indeed, be general-in-chief of an army; but he could appoint whom he pleased to that post; and there was no law against his being present, in his own person, as a spectator of the campaign.

It signified little that a Berthier should write himself commander, when a Napoleon was known to be in the camp.
It was now time that the great project should be realised.