“Take it,” he said, “or I shall be very angry. There’s something else: you must come to the Emperor with me to-morrow, to the reception of the learned societies.” Seeing me greatly perplexed, and as though demoralised by the prospect of an imperial interview: “Don’t try to escape me,” he said, “or look out for the gendarmes of my letter! You saw the fellows in the bear-skin caps on your way up. Mind you don’t fall into their hands. In any case, lest you should be tempted to run away, we will go to the Tuileries together in my carriage.” Things happened as he wished. The next day, in the minister’s company, I was ushered into a little drawing-room at the Tuileries by chamberlains in knee-breeches and silver-buckled shoes. They were queer people to look at. Their uniforms and their stiff gait gave them the appearance, in my eyes, of Beetles who, by way of wingcases, wore a great, gold-laced dress-coat, with a key in the small of the back. There were already a score of persons from all parts waiting in the room. These included geographical explorers, botanists, geologists, antiquaries, archæologists, collectors of prehistoric flints, in short, the usual representatives of provincial scientific life. The Emperor entered, very simply dressed, with no parade about him beyond a wide, red, watered-silk ribbon across his chest. No sign of majesty, an ordinary man, round and plump, with a large moustache and a pair of half-closed drowsy eyes. He moved from one to the other, talking to each of us for a moment as the minister mentioned our names and the nature of our occupations. He showed a fair amount of information as he changed his subject from the ice-floes of Spitsbergen to the dunes of Gascony, from a Carlovingian charter to the flora of the Sahara, from the progress in beetroot-growing to Cæsar’s trenches before Alesia. When my turn came, he questioned me upon the hypermetamorphosis of the Meloidæ, my last essay in entomology. I answered as best I could, floundering a little in the proper mode of address, mixing up the everyday monsieur with sire, a word whose use was so utterly new to me. I passed through the dread straits, and others succeeded me. My five minutes’ conversation with an imperial majesty was, they say, a most distinguished honour. I am quite ready to believe them, but I never had a desire to repeat it.