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78 appointed hour. I rather feared that I should not be able to find my way in the intricacies of the palace, and that I should have difficulty in explaining to the sentries who I was, and was very much surprised at the ease with which I made my way to the door through which I had passed the previous evening, and which I recognised by the wicket in it. As soon as he saw me the usher showed me into the cabinet, which was empty. The First Consul was in his drawing-room with the Minister of Finance, M. Gaudin, who afterwards became Due de Gaëte. I sat down at a table which stood in the embrasure of a window, and waited for nearly two hours for the return of the First Consul. He arrived at last, holding a paper in his hand. Without appearing to pay any attention to my presence in his study, just as if I had always been there, and had always occupied the same place, he dictated a note for the Minister of Finance with such volubility that I could hardly understand or take down half of what he was dictating. Without asking me whether I had heard him or whether I had finished writing, he took the paper away from me, and would not let me read it over, and on my remarking that it was an unintelligible scribble, he said it was on a matter well known to the Minister, who would easily be able to make it out, and so saying, he went back to the drawing-room. I never