Madame de Staël witnessed, in Paris, the 18th Brumaire, when Bonaparte overthrew the power of the directory and established his own supremacy. Her feelings were much divided: if the jacobins triumphed, sanguinary scenes might be renewed; but she anticipated with prophetic grief the result of Bonaparte's success. As she always lived in a numerous circle, and openly discussed her opinions, the first consul soon heard of the dissatisfaction that she expressed with regard to his rising power. Joseph Bonaparte, to whom she was partial, came to her and said, "My brother complains of you. 'Why,' he said yesterday, 'does not madame de Staël attach herself to my government? What does she want? The payment of her father's deposit? I will order it to be made. To remain in Paris? I will permit it. In short, what does she want?'" "The question," she replied, "is not what I want, but what I think." A tribunate made a portion of the constitution instituted in the first instance by Bonaparte. The tribunes were to have the right to speak. The first consul was aware that he must please the French at first by a shadow of freedom; but a few men were found among the tribunes who wished to turn the shadow into substance, and then Bonaparte put forth his power, and claimed the lion's share. Benjamin Constant, on the eve of attacking a measure proposed by the first consul, consulted madame de Staël. She encouraged him, through noble and conscientious motives, while she felt in her heart the injury that might redound to herself. The possibility of being forced to quit Paris filled her with alarm and wretchedness: her love for its society, her horror of retirement, had been implanted, as we have seen, in her breast from her earliest infancy; her brilliant powers of conversation fostered the taste, and she well knew also that Bonaparte was aware of her weakness, and would wound her through it. "He joined," she writes, "to the power by which he could threaten, and the wealth by which he could entice, the dispensation of ennui, which is held in terror by the French." Her drawing-room on this occasion was crowded by men ready to give in their adherence to the new government. Benjamin Constant drew near, and said, "your room is filled with persons whose society is pleasing to you: if I speak, to-morrow it will be a desert. Think of this." "One must follow one's conviction," she replied. In narrating this anecdote, she frankly adds that she spoke on the impulse of the moment; but that, if she could then have foreseen the sufferings in store, she should not have had strength to refuse the offer Constant made to remain silent. He proved a true prophet. On the following day she received multiplied excuses for a party she gave. As they came she felt disturbed, and she began to find fault with her courage of the preceding day. To add to her inquietude, the minister of police, Fouché, sent for her to say, that the first