The night selected was that of the 10th of October, when the Chief Consul was expected to visit the opera, and the machine was planted in the Rue St.Nicaise, through which he must pass in his way thither from the Tuileries.

Napoleon told his friends at St.Helena, that having laboured hard all day, he felt himself overpowered with sleep after dinner, and that Josephine, who was anxious to be at the opera, had much difficulty in at last rousing and persuading him to go.

"I fell fast asleep again" (he said), "after I was in my carriage; and at the moment when the explosion took place, I was dreaming of the danger I had undergone some years before in crossing the Tagliamento at midnight, by the light of torches, during a flood." He awoke, and exclaimed to Lannes and Bessieres, who were with him in the coach, "We are blown up." The attendants would have stopped the carriage, but, with great presence of mind, he bade them drive as fast as they could to the theatre, which he alone of all the party entered with an unruffled countenance.

He had escaped most narrowly.

The coachman, happening to be intoxicated, drove more rapidly than was his custom.[38] The engine exploded half a minute after the carriage had passed it--killing twenty persons, wounding fifty-three (among whom was St.Regent, the assassin who fired the train), and shattering the windows of several houses on both sides of the street.
The audience in the opera-house, when the news was divulged, testified their feelings with enthusiasm.