f 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.

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 t