The two councils were not disposed to be behind the Directory in the manifestation of joy.  A few days after they gave a banquet to the General in the gallery of the Louvre, which had recently been enriched by the masterpieces of painting conquered in Italy.

At this time Bonaparte displayed great modesty in all his transactions in Paris.  The administrators of the department of the Seine having sent a deputation to him to inquire what hour and day he would allow them to wait on him, he carried himself his answer to the department, accompanied by General Berthier.  It was also remarked that the judge of the peace of the arrondissement where the General lived having called on him on the 6th of December, the evening of his arrival, he returned the visit next morning.  These attentions, trifling as they may appear, were not without their effect on the minds of the Parisians.

In consequence of General Bonaparte’s victories, the peace he had effected, and the brilliant reception of which he had been the object, the business of Vendemiaire was in some measure forgotten.  Every one was eager to get a sight of the young hero whose career had commenced with so much ‘eclat’.  He lived very retiredly, yet went often to the theatre.  He desired me, one day, to go and request the representation of two of the best pieces of the time, in which Elleviou, Mesdames St. Aubin, Phillis, and other distinguished performers played.  His message was, that he only wished these two pieces on the same night, if that were possible.  The manager told me that nothing that the conqueror of Italy wished for was impossible, for he had long ago erased that word from the dictionary.  Bonaparte laughed heartily at the manager’s answer.  When we went to the theatre he seated himself, as usual, in the back of the box, behind Madame Bonaparte, making me sit by her side.  The pit and boxes, however, soon found out that he was in the house, and loudly called for him.  Several times an earnest desire to see him was manifested, but all in vain, for he never showed himself.

Some days after, being at the Theatre des Arts, at the second representation of ‘Horatius Cocles’, although he was sitting at the back of a box in the second tier, the audience discovered that he was in the house.  Immediately acclamations arose from all quarters; but he kept himself concealed as much as possible, and said to a person in the next box, “Had I known that the boxes were so exposed, I should not have come.”

During Bonaparte’s stay at Paris a woman sent a messenger to warn him that his life would be attempted, and that poison was to be employed for that purpose.  Bonaparte had the bearer of this information arrested, who:  went, accompanied by the judge of the peace, to the woman’s house, where she was found extended on the floor, and bathed in her blood.  The men whose plot she had overheard, having discovered that she had revealed their secret, murdered her.  The poor woman was dreadfully mangled:  her throat was cut; and, not satisfied with that, the assassins had also hacked her body with sharp instruments.