like a sonorous wave toward the Rue de la
Victoire, told Josephine of her husband's return. The impressionable
Creole had awaited him anxiously. She sprang to meet him in such
agitation that she was unable to utter a single word.

"Come, come!" said Bonaparte, becoming the kindly man he was in his own
home, "calm yourself. We have done to-day all that could be done."

"Is it all over?"

"Oh, no!" replied Bonaparte.

"Must it be done all over again to-morrow?"

"Yes, but to-morrow it will be merely a formality."

That formality was rather rough; but every one knows of the events at
Saint-Cloud. We will, therefore, dispense with relating them, and turn
at once to the result, impatient as we are to get back to the real
subject of our drama, from which the grand historical figure we have
introduced diverted us for an instant.

One word more. The 20th Brumaire, at one o'clock in the morning,
Bonaparte was appointed First Consul for ten years. He himself selected
Cambaceres and Lebrun as his associates under the title of Second
Consuls, being firmly resolved this time to concentrate in his own
person, not only all the functions of the two consuls, but those of the
ministers.

The 20th Brumaire he slept at the Luxembourg in president Gohier's bed,
the latter having been liberated with his colleague Moulins.

Roland was made governor of the Luxembourg.

CHAPTER XXV. AN IMPORTANT COMMUNICATION

Some time after this military revolution, which created a great stir in
Europe, convulsing the Continent for a time, as a tempest convulses
the ocean--some time after, we say, on the morning of the 30th Nivoise,
better and more clearly known to our readers as the 20th of January,
1800, Roland, in looking over the voluminous correspondence which his
new office entailed upon him, found, among fifty other letters asking
for an audience, the following:

MONSIEUR THE GOVERNOR-I know your loyalty to your word, and you
will see that I rely on it. I wish to speak to you for five
minutes, during which I must remain masked.

I have a request to make to you. This request you will grant or
deny. In either case, as I shall have entered the Palace of the
Luxembourg in the interest oL the First Consul, Bonaparte, and
the royalist party to which I belong, I shall ask for your word
of honor that I be allowed to leave it as freely as you allow
me to enter.

If to-morrow, at seven in the evening, I see a solitary