( 17 )
Retired the whole day in his garden he not only did not participate in the public re- joicing, but affected to continue his useful study and occupation without being dis- turbed by the noise His comrades were too much engaged in their own amusement, to think of troubling his, and would only have laughed at him, if his strange behavi- our in an uncommon circumstance had not drawn upon him the general attention.
Towards nine o’clock of the evening, about twenty of the young people were as- sembled in that garden,which joined to his, where the proprietor had promised a show to his friends. It was a pyramid, com- bined of different kinds of fire-works, to be played off;, unfortunately he had forgotten to remove a little box, containing several pounds of powder ; and,the spectators little imagined how dear they were about to pay for their innocent curiosity We were reffing round the little building to which he had set fire ; and, while we were admir- ing the effect some unlucky sparks enternal the fatal magazine : the explosion was dread- full some legs and arms broken two or three trees miserably burned, and some paces of wall thrown down, were the disagreeable consequences of it ; but while to save them selves all those whom the splinters had not breached broke -down the pallisades of the neighbouring gardens, Bonaparte was seen,
