After these two years of folly and happiness, the Directory of Paris, giving itself the airs of a sovereign firmly enthroned, began to shew a mortal hatred of everything that was not commonplace. The incompetent Generals whom it imposed on the Army of Italy lost a succession of battles on those plains of Verona, which had witnessed before the prodigies of Arcole and Lonato. The Austrians again drew near to Milan; Lieutenant Robert, who had been promoted to the command of a battalion, and had been wounded at the Battle of Cassano, came to lodge for the last time in the house of his friend the Marchesa del Dongo. Their parting was a sad one; Robert set forth with Conte Pietranera, who followed the French to their retirement on Novi. The young Contessa, to whom her brother refused to pay the marriage portion, followed the army, riding in a cart.

Then began that period of reaction and a return to the old ideas, which the Milanese call i tredici mesi (the thirteen months), because as it turned out their destiny willed that their return to stupidity should last for thirteen months only, until Marengo. Everyone who was old, bigoted, and morose, reappeared at the head of affairs, and resumed the leadership of society; presently the people, who had remained faithful to the sound doctrines published a report in the villages that Napoleon had been hanged by the Mamalukes in Egypt, as he so richly deserved.