The First Consul gave directions himself for what little alterations he wanted in his own apartments.  A state bed—­not that of Louis XVI.—­was placed in the chamber next his cabinet, on the south side, towards the grand staircase of the Pavilion of Flora.  I may as well mention here that he very seldom occupied that hed, for Bonaparte was very simple in his manner of living in private, and was not fond of state, except as a means of imposing on mankind.  At the Luxembourg, at Malmaison, and during the first period that he occupied the Tuileries, Bonaparte, if I may speak in the language of common life, always slept with his wife.  He went every evening down to Josephine by a small staircase leading from a wardrobe attached to his cabinet, and which had formerly been the chapel of Maria de Medici.  I never went to Bonaparte’s bedchamber but by this staircase; and when he came to our cabinet it was always by the wardrobe which I have mentioned.  The door opened opposite the only window of our room, and it commanded a view of the garden.

As for our cabinet, where so many great, and also small events were prepared, and where I passed so many hours of my life, I can, even now, give the most minute description of it to those who like such details.

There were two tables.  The best, which was the First Consul’s, stood in the middle of the room, and his armchair was turned with its back to the fireplace, having the window on the right.  To the right of this again was a little closet where Duroc sat, through which we could communicate with the clerk of the office and the grand apartments of the Court.  When the First Consul was seated at his table in his chair (the arms of which he so frequently mutilated with his penknife) he had a large bookcase opposite to him.  A little to the right, on one side of the bookcase, was another door, opening into the cabinet which led directly to the state bedchamber which I have mentioned.  Thence we passed into the grand Presentation Saloon, on the ceiling of which Lebrun had painted a likeness of Louis xiv.  A tri-coloured cockade placed on the forehead of the great King still bore witness of the imbecile turpitude of the Convention.  Lastly came the hall of the Guards, in front of the grand staircase of the Pavilion of Flora.

My writing-table, which was extremely plain, stood near the window, and in summer I had a view of the thick foliage of the chestnut-trees; but in order to see the promenaders in the garden I was obliged to raise myself from my seat.  My back was turned to the General’s side, so that it required only a slight movement of the head to speak to each other.  Duroc was seldom in his little cabinet, and that was the place where I gave some audiences.  The Consular cabinet, which afterwards became the Imperial, has left many impressions on my mind; and I hope the reader, in going through these volumes, will not think that they have been of too slight a description.