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74 pated the respectful awe in which I stood. He walked rapidly into the dining-room, whither I followed Madame Bonaparte and her daughter. Madame Bonaparte made me sit next her. The First Consul spoke to me several times during dinner, which only lasted twenty minutes. He spoke of my studies, and of Palissot, with a kindness and a simplicity which put me entirely at my ease, and showed me how gentle and simple this man, who bore on his forehead and in his eyes the mark of such imposing superiority, was in his private life. When I returned to the drawing-room we found General Davoust. The First Consul walked up and down the room with him, conversing, and a quarter of an hour later disappeared by the staircase from which he had come, without having spoken to me on the matter for which he had ordered my attendance."

This whole picture is so like Napoleon; the hurried entrance, the equally hurried dinner, and then the resumption immediately after of the interrupted threads of work. Let us go on:

"I remained with Madame Bonaparte until eleven o'clock. I had asked her to be so good as to tell me whether I should go away, thinking that I had been forgotten. She told me to remain, and assured me that the First Consul would send for me. True enough, a footman came to fetch me. I followed him down a long passage to a staircase by which we reached a little door, at which he