replied Monsieur de Ch---- with a smile and a bow, "j'ai cinq-z-enfants."
--"Oh, mon Dieu," cried Madame Bonaparte, "what a regiment! That is
extraordinary; what, sir, seize enfants?"--"Yes, Madame, cinq-z-enfants,
cinq-z-enfants," repeated the official, who did not see anything very
marvelous in it, and who wondered at the astonishment shown by Madame
Bonaparte. At last some one explained to her the mistake which la
liaison dangereuse of M. de Ch had caused her to make, and added with
comic seriousness, "Deign, Madame, to excuse M. de Ch----. The
Revolution has interrupted the prosecution of his studies." He was more
than sixty years of age.

From Evreux we set out for Rouen, where we arrived at three o'clock in
the afternoon. Chaptal, Minister of the Interior, Beugnot, Prefect of
the Department, and Cambaceres, Archbishop of Rouen, came to meet the
First Consul at some distance from the city. The Mayor Fontenay waited
at the gates, and presented the keys. The First Consul held them some
time in his hands, and then returned them to the mayor, saying to him
loud enough to be heard by the crowd which surrounded the carriage,

"Citizens, I cannot trust the keys of the city to any one better than the
worthy magistrate who so worthily enjoys my confidence and your own;" and
made Fontenay enter his carriage, saying he wished to honor Rouen in the
person of its mayor.

Madame Bonaparte rode in the carriage with her husband; General Moncey,
Inspector-general of the Constabulary, on horseback on the right; in the
second carriage was General Soult and his aides-de-camp; in the third
carriage, General Bessieres and M. de Lugay; in the fourth, General
Lauriston; then came the carriages of the personal attendants, Hambard,
Hebert, and I being in the first.