On the day after our second return from Germany, which was in May 1795, we mat Bonaparte in the Palais Royal, near a shop kept by a man named Girardin.  Bonaparte embraced Bourrienne as a friend whom he loved and was glad to see.  We went that evening to the Theatre Francais.  The performance consisted of a tragedy; and ‘Le Sourd, ou l’Auberge pleine’.  During the latter piece the audience was convulsed with laughter.  The part of Dasnieres was represented by Batiste the younger, and it was never played better.  The bursts of laughter were so loud and frequent that the actor was several times obliged to stop in the midst of his part.  Bonaparte alone (and it struck me as being very extraordinary) was silent, and coldly insensible to the humour which was so irresistibly diverting to everyone else.  I remarked at this period that his character was reserved, and frequently gloomy.  His smile was hypocritical, and often misplaced; and I recollect that a few days after our return he gave us one of these specimens of savage hilarity which I greatly disliked, and which prepossessed me against him.  He was telling us that, being before Toulon, where he commanded the artillery, one of his officers was visited by his wife, to wham he had been but a short time married, and whom he tenderly loved.  A few days after, orders were given for another attack upon the town, in which this officer was to be engaged.  His wife came to General Bonaparte, and with tears entreated him to dispense with her husband’s services that day.  The General was inexorable, as he himself told us, with a sort of savage exaltation.  The moment for the attack arrived, and the officer, though a very brave man, as Bonaparte him self-assured us, felt a presentiment of his approaching death.  He turned pale and trembled.  Ha was stationed beside the General, and during an interval when the firing from the town was very heavy, Bonaparte called out to him, “Take care, there is a shell coming!” The officer, instead of moving to one side, stooped down, and was literally severed in two.  Bonaparte laughed loudly while he described the event with horrible minuteness.  At this time we saw him almost every day.  He frequently came to dine with us.  As there was a scarcity of bread, and sometimes only two ounces per head daily were distributed in the section, it was customary to request one’s guests to bring their own bread, as it could not be procured for money.  Bonaparte and his brother Louis (a mild, agreeable 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.