I read this letter to the First Consul, who immediately said, “Bourrienne, this is sacred!  Do not lose a minute.  Send the old man ten times the sum.  Write to General Durosel that he shall be immediately erased from the list of emigrants.  What mischief those brigands of the Convention have done!  I can never repair it all.”  Bonaparte uttered these words with a degree of emotion which I rarely saw him evince.  In the evening he asked me whether I had executed his orders, which I had done without losing a moment.  The death of M. Froth had given me a lesson as to the value of time!

Availing myself of the privilege I have already frequently taken of making abrupt transitions from one subject to another, according as the recollection of past circumstances occurs to my mind, I shall here note down a few details, which may not improperly be called domestic, and afterwards describe a conspiracy which was protected by the very man against whom it was hatched.

At the Tuileries, where the First Consul always resided during the winter and sometimes a part of the summer, the grand salon was situated between his cabinet and the Room in which he received the persons with whom he had appointed audiences.  When in this audience-chamber, if he wanted anything or had occasion to speak to anybody, he pulled a bell which was answered by a confidential servant named Landoire, who was the messenger of the First Consul’s cabinet.  When Bonaparte’s bell rung it was usually for the purpose of making some inquiry of me respecting a paper, a name, a date, or some matter of that sort; and then Landoire had to pass through the cabinet and salon to answer the bell and afterwards to return and to tell me I was wanted.  Impatient at the delay occasioned by this running about, Bonaparte, without saying anything to me, ordered the bell to be altered so that it should ring within the cabinet; and exactly above my table.  Next morning when I entered the cabinet I saw a man mounted-upon a ladder.  “What are you doing here?” said I.  “I am hanging a bell, sir.”  I called Landoire and asked him who had given the order.  “The First Consul,” he replied.  I immediately ordered the man to come down and remove the ladder, which he accordingly did.  When I went, according to custom, to awaken the First Consul and read the newspapers to him I said, “General, I found a man this morning hanging a bell in your cabinet.  I was told it was by your orders; but being convinced there must be some mistake I sent him away.  Surely the bell was not intended for you, and I cannot imagine it was intended for me:  who then could it be for?—­“What a stupid fellow that Landoire is!” said Bonaparte.  “Yesterday, when Cambaceres was with me, I wanted you.  Landoire did not come when I touched the bell.  I thought it was broken, and ordered him to get it repaired.  I suppose the bell-hanger was doing it when you saw him, for you know the wire passes through the cabinet.”  I was satisfied with this explanation, though I was not deceived, by it.  For the sake of appearance he reproved Landoire, who, however, had done nothing more than execute the order he had received.  How could he imagine I would submit to such treatment, considering that we had been friends since our boyhood, and that I was now living on full terms of confidence and familiarity with him?