My firm conviction being that it was lost time to seek for her in obscure and out-of-the-way quarters of the city, I thought it best to pursue the search in the thronged and fashionable resorts of the gay world, the assemblies and theatres. Strong in this conviction, I changed one of my three gold pieces, to purchase a ticket for the opera. The reader may smile at the sacrifice; but when he who thinks four sous enough for a dinner, pays twelve francs for the liberty to be crushed in the crowded parterre of a play-house, he is indeed buying pleasure at a costly price. It was something more than a fifth of all I possessed in the world, but, after all, my chief regret arose from thinking that it left me so few remaining "throws of the dice" for "Fortune." I have often reflected since that day by what a mere accident I was present, and yet the spectacle was one that I have never forgotten. It was the last time the First Consul appeared in public, before his assumption of the imperial title; and at no period through all his great career was the enthusiasm more impassioned regarding him. He sat in the box adjoining the stage--Cambaceres and Lebrun, with a crowd of others, standing, and not sitting, around and behind his chair. When he appeared, the whole theatre rose to greet him, and three several times was he obliged to rise and acknowledge the salutations. And with what a stately condescension did he make these slight acknowledgments!--what haughtiness was there in the glance he threw around him. I have often heard it said, and I have seen it also written, that previous to his assumption of the crown, Bonaparte's manner exhibited the mean arts and subtle devices of a candidate on the hustings, dispensing all the flatteries and scattering all the promises that such occasions are so prolific of. I can not, of course, pretend to contradict this statement positively; but I can record the impression which that scene made upon me as decidedly the opposite of this assumption. I have repeatedly seen him since that event, but never do I remember his calm, cold features more impassively stern, more proudly collected, than on that night.