young man, who was the General’s aide de army) used to bring with them their ration bread, which was black, and mixed with bran.  I was sorry to observe that all this bad bread fell to the share of the poor aide de camp, for we provided the General with a finer kind, which was made clandestinely by a pastrycook, from flour which we contrived to smuggle from Sens, where my husband had some farms.  Had we been denounced, the affair might have cost us our heads.

We spent six weeks in Paris, and we went frequently with Bonaparte to the theatres, and to the fine concerts given by Garat in the Rue St. Marc.  These were the first brilliant entertainments that took place after the death of Robespierre.  There was always something original in Bonaparte’s behaviour, for he often slipped away from us without saying a word; and when we were supposing he had left the theatre, we would suddenly discover him in the second or third tier, sitting alone in a box, and looking rather sulky.

Before our departure for Sens, where my husband’s family reside, and which was fixed upon for the place of my first accouchement, we looked out for more agreeable apartments than we had in the Rue Grenier St. Lazare, which we only had temporarily.  Bonaparte used to assist us in our researches.  At last we took the first floor of a handsome new house, No. 19 Rue des Marais.  Bonaparte, who wished to stop in Paris, went to look at a house opposite to ours.  Ha had thoughts of taking it for himself, his uncle Fesch (afterwards Cardinal Fesch), and a gentleman named Patrauld, formerly one of his masters at the Military School.  One day he said, “With that house over there, my friends in it, and a cabriolet, I shall be the happiest fellow in the world.”

We soon after left town for Sens.  The house was not taken by him, for other and great affairs were preparing.  During the interval between our departure and the fatal day of Vendemiaire several letters passed between him and his school companion.  These letters were of the most amiable and affectionate description.  They have been stolen.  On our return, in November of the same year, everything was changed.  The college friend was now a great personage.  He had got the command of Paris in return for his share in the events of Vendemiaire.  Instead of a small house in the Rue des Marais, he occupied a splendid hotel in the Rue des Capucines; the modest cabriolet was converted into a superb equipage, and the man himself was no longer the same.  But the friends of his youth were still received when they made their morning calls.  They were invited to grand dejeuners, which were sometimes attended by ladies; and, among others, by the beautiful Madame Tallien and her friend the amiable Madame de Beauharnais, to whom Bonaparte had begun to pay attention.  He cared little for his friends, and ceased to address them in the style of familiar equality.