It is noon, and the first consul is receiving a host of ambassadors within the consular apartment, answering probably to the "_Salle des Marechaux_" of Napoleon III. Therein the envoys from every European state are attempting to comprehend, what none could ever fathom, the consul's mind. Let us not intermeddle with their conference, but look around us, and view the gallery in which we are waiting until he, who was yesterday so small, and who is to-day so great, should come forth amongst us. How gorgeous is the old gallery, with its many windows, its rich roof, and gilded panels! The footmen of the first consul, in splendid liveries, are bringing chairs for the ladies who are awaiting the approach of that schoolmaster's son; they are waiting until the weighty conference within is terminated. Peace-officers, superbly bedizened, are walking up and down to keep ladies to their seats and gentlemen to the ranks, so as to form a passage for the first consul to pass down. Pages of the back stairs, dressed in black, and with gold chains hanging around their necks, are standing by the door to guard it, or to open it when he on whom all thoughts are fixed should come forth. But what is beyond everything striking is the array of Buonaparte's aids-de-camp,--fine fellows, war-worn,--men such as he, and he alone, would choose; and so gorgeous, so radiant are their uniforms, that all else seem as if in shadow in comparison. The gardens of the Tuileries meantime are filling with troops whom the first consul is going to review. There are now Zouaves there; but these are men whom the suns of the tropics hate embrowned; little fellows, many of them, of all heights, such as we might make drummers of in our stalwart ranks; but see how muscular, active, full of fire they are; fierce as hawks, relentless as tigers. See the horse-soldiers on their scraggy steeds; watch their evolutions, and you will own, with a young guardsman who stood gazing, fifty years afterward, on the troops which followed Napoleon III into Paris, that "they are worth looking at." The long hour is past; the pages in black are evidently on the watch; the double door which leads into the _Salle des Marechaux_ is opened from within; a stricter line is instantly kept by the officers in the gallery. Fair faces, many an English one among them, are flushed. Anon he appears, whilst an officer at the door, with one hand raised above his head and the other extended, exclaims, "_Le Premier Consul_."