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?

Before I speak of the conspiracy of Ceracchi, Arena, Topino-Lebrun, and others, I must notice a remark made by Napoleon at St. Helena.  He said, or is alleged to have said, “The two attempts which placed me in the greatest danger were those of the sculptor Ceracchi and of the fanatic of Schoenbrun.”  I was not at Schoenbrun at the time; but I am convinced that Bonaparte was in the most imminent danger.  I have been informed on unquestionable authority that Staps set out from Erfurth with the intention of assassinating the Emperor; but he wanted the necessary courage for executing the design.  He was armed with a large