her visit to the milliner's was announced to him. While
his secretary, with four other persons, entered the milliner's house
through the street door, Chaptal, with four of his spies, forced the door
of the passage open, which was no sooner done than the disguised gallant
was found, and threatened in the most rude manner by the Minister and his
companions. He would have been still worse used had not the unexpected
appearance of Duroc and a whisper to Chaptal put a stop to the fury of
this enraged lover. The incognito is said to have been Bonaparte
himself, who, the same evening, deprived Chaptal of his ministerial
portfolio, and would have sent him to Cayenne, instead of to the Senate,
had not Duroc dissuaded his Sovereign from giving an eclat to an affair
which it, would be best to bury in oblivion.

Chaptal has never from that day approached Mademoiselle George, and,
according to report, Napoleon has also renounced this conquest in favour
of Duroc, who is at least her nominal gallant. The quantity of jewels
with which she has recently been decorated, and displayed with so much
ostentation in the new tragedy, 'The Templars', indicate, however, a
Sovereign rather than a subject for a lover. And, indeed, she already
treats the directors of the theatre, her comrades, and even the public,
more as a real than a theatrical Princess. Without any cause whatever,
but from a mere caprice to see the camp on the coast, she set out,
without leave of absence, and without any previous notice, on the very
day she was to play; and this popular and interesting tragedy was put off
for three weeks, until she chose to return to her duty.

When complaint was made to the prefects of the palace, now the governors
of our theatres, Duroc said that the orders of the Emperor were that no
notice should be taken of this 'etourderie', which should not occur
again.

Chaptal was, before the Revolution, a bankrupt chemist at Montpellier,
having ruined himself in search after the philosopher's stone. To
persons in such circumstances, with great presumption, some talents, but
no principles, the Revolution could not, with all its anarchy, confusion,
and crime, but be a real blessing, as Chaptal called it in his first
speech at the Jacobin Club. Wishing to mimic, at Montpellier, the taking
of the Bastille at Paris, he, in May, 1790, seduced the lower classes and
the suburbs to an insurrection, and to an attack on the citadel, which
the governor,