It should be stated, first of all, that one of the greatest pleasures of Madame Bonaparte, at Malmaison, was to take walks on the road just outside the walls of the park; and she always preferred this outside road, in spite of the clouds of dust which were constantly rising there, to the delightful walks inside the park.  One day, accompanied by her daughter Hortense, she told Carrat to follow her in her walk; and he was delighted to be thus honored until he saw rise suddenly out of a ditch; a great figure covered with a white sheet, in fact, a genuine ghost, such as I have seen described in the translations of some old English romances.

It is unnecessary to say, that the ghost was some one placed there by order of these ladies, in order to frighten Carrat; and certainly the comedy succeeded marvelously well, for as soon as Carrat perceived the ghost, he was very much frightened, and clutching Madame Bonaparte, said to her in a tremor, “Madame, Madame, do you see that ghost?  It is the spirit of the lady who died lately at Plombieres.”—­“Be quiet, Carrat, you are a coward.”—­“Ah, but indeed it is her spirit which has come back.”  As Carrat thus spoke, the man in the white sheet advanced toward him, shaking it; and poor Carrat, overcome with terror, fell backwards in a faint, and it required all the attentions which were bestowed upon him to restore him to consciousness.

Another day, while the general was still in Egypt, and consequently before I was in the service of any member of his family, Madame Bonaparte wished to give some of her ladies an exhibition of Carrat’s cowardice; and for this purpose there was concerted among the ladies of Malmaison a plot, in which Mademoiselle Hortense

   [Hortense Beauharnais, born at Paris, 1783, was then just sixteen
   years of age.  Married Louis Bonaparte and became Queen of Holland,
   1806.  Died 1837.  She was the mother of Napoleon iii. —­TRANS.]

was chief conspirator.  This incident has been so often narrated in my presence by Madame Bonaparte, that I am familiar with the ludicrous details.  Carrat slept in a room adjoining which there was a closet.  A hole was made in the wall between these rooms, and a string passed through, at the end of which was tied a can filled with water, this cooling element being suspended exactly over the head of the patient’s bed.  This was not all, for they had also taken the precaution to remove the slats which supported the mattress; and as Carrat was in the habit of going to sleep without a light, he saw neither the preparations for his downfall, nor the can of water provided for his new baptism.  All the members of the plot had been waiting for some moments in the adjoining closet; when he threw himself heavily upon his bed, it crashed in, and at the same instant the play of the string made the can of water do its effective work.  The victim at the same time of a fall, and of a nocturnal shower-bath, Carrat