When Bonaparte had finished:  his toilet, which he did with great attention, for he was scrupulously neat in his person, we went down to his cabinet.  There he signed the orders on important petitions which had been analysed by me on the preceding evening.  On reception and parade days he was particularly exact in signing these orders, because I used to remind him that he would be, likely to see most of the petitioners, and that they would ask him for answers.  To spare him this annoyance I used often to acquaint them beforehand of what had been granted or refused, and what had been the decision of the First Consul.  He next perused the letters which I had opened and laid on his table, ranging them according to their importance.  He directed me to answer them in his name; he occasionally wrote the answers himself, but not often.

At ten o’clock the ‘maitre d’hotel’ entered, and announced breakfast, saying, “The General is served.”  We went to breakfast, and the repast was exceedingly simple.  He ate almost every morning some chicken, dressed with oil and onions.  This dish was then, I believe, called ‘poulet a la Provencale’; but our restaurateurs have since conferred upon it the more ambitious name of ‘poulet a la Marengo.’

Bonaparte drank little wine, always either claret or Burgundy, and the latter by preference.  After breakfast, as well as after dinner, he took a cup of strong coffee.

—­[M.  Brillat de Savarin, whose memory is dear to all gourmands, had established, as a gastronomic principle, that “he who does not take coffee after each meal is assuredly not a men of taste.”—­ Bourrienne.]—­

I never saw him take any between his meals, and I cannot imagine what could have given rise to the assertion of his being particularly fond of coffee.  When he worked late at night he never ordered coffee, but chocolate, of which he made me take a cup with him.  But this only happened when our business was prolonged till two or three in the morning.

All that has been said about Bonaparte’s immoderate use of snuff has no more foundation in truth than his pretended partiality for coffee.  It is true that at an early period of his life he began to take snuff, but it was very sparingly, and always out of a box; and if he bore any resemblance to Frederick the Great, it was not by filling his waistcoat-pockets with snuff, for I must again observe he carried his notions of personal neatness to a fastidious degree.

Bonaparte had two ruling passions, glory and war.  He was never more gay than in the camp, and never more morose than in the inactivity of peace.  Plans for the construction of public monuments also pleased his imagination, and filled up the void caused by the want of active occupation.  He was aware that monuments form part of the history of nations, of whose civilisation they bear evidence for ages after those who created them have disappeared from the earth, and that they likewise often bear false-witness to