However, these discussions as to his dress being renewed at the time of his Majesty’s marriage to the Empress Marie Louise, the King of Naples begged the Emperor to allow him to send him his tailor.  His Majesty, who sought at that time every means of pleasing his young wife, accepted the offer of his brother-in-law; and that very day I went for Leger, King Joachim’s tailor, and brought him with me to the chateau, recommending him to make the suits which would be ordered as loose as possible, certain as I was in advance, that, Monsieur Jourdain [a character in a Moliere comedy] to the contrary, if the Emperor could not get into them easily, he would not wear them.  Leger paid no attention to my advice, but took his measure very closely.  The two coats were beautifully made; but the Emperor pronounced them uncomfortable, and wore them only once, and Leger did no more work for his Majesty.  At one time, long before this, he had ordered a very handsome coat of chestnut brown velvet, with diamond buttons, which he wore to a reception of her Majesty the Empress, with a black cravat, though the Empress Josephine had prepared for him an elegant lace stock, which all my entreaties could not induce him to put on.

The Emperor’s vest and breeches were always of white cassimere; he changed them every morning, and they were washed only three or four times.  Two hours after he had left his room, it often happened that his breeches were all stained with ink, owing to his habit of wiping his pen on them, and scattering ink all around him by knocking his pen against the table.  Nevertheless, as he dressed in the morning for the whole day, he did not change his clothes on that account, and remained in that condition the remainder of the day.  I have already said that he wore none but white silk stockings, his shoes, which were very light and thin, being lined with silk, and his boots lined throughout inside with white fustian; and when he felt an itching on one of his legs, he rubbed it with the heel of his shoe or the boot on the other leg, which added still more to the effect of the ink blotches.  His shoe-buckles were oval, either plain gold or with medallions, and he also wore gold buckles on his garters.  I never saw him wear pantaloons under the Empire.

Owing to the Emperor’s tenacity to old customs, his shoemaker in the first days of the Empire was still the same he employed at the military school; and as his shoes had been made by the same measure, from that time, and no new one ever taken, his shoes, as well as his boots, were always badly made and ungraceful.  For a long time he wore them pointed; but I persuaded him to have them ‘en bec de canne’, as that was the fashion.  At last his old measure was found too small, and I got his Majesty’s consent to have a new one-taken; so I summoned the shoemaker, who had succeeded his father, and was exceedingly stupid.  He had never seen the Emperor, although he worked for him; and when he learned that he was