of the First Consul as he came out of his cabinet. He drew
near me, and inquired with great interest how I was. I replied that,
thanks to the care taken of me, according to the orders of my excellent
master and mistress, I was quite well again. "So much the better," said
the First Consul. "Constant, make haste, and get your strength back.
Continue to serve me well, and I will take care of you. Here," added he,
placing in my hand three little crumpled papers, "these are to replenish
your wardrobe;" and he passed on, without listening to the profuse thanks
which, with great emotion, I was attempting to express, much more for the
consideration and interest in me shown by him than for his present, for I
did not then know of what it consisted. After he passed on I unrolled my
papers: they were three bank-bills, each for a thousand francs! I was
moved to tears by so great a kindness. We must remember that at this
period the First Consul was not rich, although he was the first
magistrate of the republic. How deeply the remembrance of this generous
deed touches me, even to-day. I do not know if details so personal to me
will be found interesting; but they seem to me proper as evidence of the
true character of the Emperor, which has been so outrageously
misrepresented, and also as an instance of his ordinary conduct towards
the servants of his house; it shows too, at the same time, whether the
severe economy that he required in his domestic management, and of which
I will speak elsewhere, was the result, as has been stated, of sordid
avarice, or whether it was not rather a rule of prudence, from which he
departed willingly whenever his kindness of heart or his humanity urged
him thereto.

I am not certain that my memory does not deceive me in leading me to put
in this place a circumstance which shows the esteem in which the First
Consul held the brave soldiers of his army, and how he loved to manifest
it on all occasions. I was one day in his sleeping-room, at the usual
hour for his toilet, and was performing that day the duties of chief
valet, Hambard being temporarily absent or indisposed, there being in the
room, besides the body servants, only the brave and modest Colonel
Gerard Lacuee, one of the aides-de-camp of the First Consul. Jerome
Bonaparte, then hardly seventeen years of age, was introduced. This
young man gave his family frequent cause of complaint, and feared no one
except his brother Napoleon, who reprimanded, lec