The orchestra "attacked" the introduction to the quartett. The fatal prelude must have sounded somewhat unmusical to the ear of the First Consul; but the conspirators were now all in custody and assembled in one of the vestibules on the ground floor. * * * * * [Sidenote: LES MYSTERES D'ISIS.] On the 24th of December, 1800, the day on which the "infernal machine" was directed against the First Consul on his way to the Opera, a French version of Haydn's _Creation_ was to be executed. Indeed, the performance had already commenced, when, during the gentle _adagio_ of the introduction, the dull report of an explosion, as if of a cannon, was heard, but without the audience being at all alarmed. Immediately afterwards the First Consul appeared in his box with Lannes, Lauriston, Berthier, and Duroc. Madame Bonaparte, as she was getting into her carriage, thought of some alteration to make in her dress, and returned to her apartments for a few minutes. But for this delay her carriage would have passed before the infernal machine at the moment of its explosion. Ten minutes afterwards she made her appearance at the Opera with her daughter, Mademoiselle Hortense Beauharnais, Madame Murat, and Colonel Rapp. The performance of the _Creation_ continued as if nothing had happened; and the report, which had interfered so unexpectedly with the effect of the opening _adagio_, was explained in various ways; the account generally received in the pit being, that a grocer going into his cellar with a candle, had set light to a barrel of gunpowder. Two houses were said to have been blown up. This was at the beginning of the first part of the _Creation_; at the end of the second, the number had probably increased to half a dozen. Under the consulate and the empire, the arts did not flourish greatly in France; not for want of direct encouragement on the part of the ruler, but rather because he at the same time encouraged far above everything else the art of war. Until the appearance of Spontini with _la Vestale_, the Académie, under Napoleon Bonaparte, whether known as Bonaparte or Napoleon, was chiefly supported by composers who composed without inventing, and who, with the exception of Cherubini, were either very feeble originators or mere plagiarists and spoliators. Even Mozart did not escape the French arrangers. His _Marriage of Figaro_ had been brought out in 1798, with all the prose dialogue of Beaumarchais's comedy substituted for the recitative of the original opera. _Les Mystères d'Isis_, an adaptation, perversion, disarrangement of _Die Zauberflötte_, with several pieces suppressed, or replaced by fragments from the _Nozze di Figaro_, _Don Giovanni_, and Haydn's symphonies, was produced on the 23rd of August, 1801, under the auspices of Morel the librettist, and Lachnith the musician.