"Is not this a great day for Ireland?" said the Marquis, with a tear
trickling down his noble face. "O Ireland! O my country! But no more of
that. Go up, Phil, you divvle, and offer her Majesty the choice of punch
or negus."

Among the young fellows with whom I was most intimate in Paris was
Eugene Beauharnais, the son of the ill-used and unhappy Josephine by her
former marriage with a French gentleman of good family. Having a smack
of the old blood in him, Eugene's manners were much more refined than
those of the new-fangled dignitaries of the Emperor's Court, where (for
my knife and fork were regularly laid at the Tuileries) I have seen my
poor friend Murat repeatedly mistake a fork for a toothpick, and the
gallant Massena devour pease by means of his knife, in a way more
innocent than graceful. Talleyrand, Eugene, and I used often to laugh at
these eccentricities of our brave friends; who certainly did not shine
in the drawing-room, however brilliant they were in the field of battle.
The Emperor always asked me to take wine with him, and was full of
kindness and attention.

"I like Eugene," he would say, pinching my ear confidentially, as his
way was--"I like Eugene to keep company with such young fellows as you;
you have manners; you have principles; my rogues from the camp have
none. And I like you, Philip my boy," he added, "for being so attentive
to my poor wife--the Empress Josephine, I mean." All these honors made
my friends at the Marquis's very proud, and my enemies at Court crever
with envy. Among these, the atrocious Cambaceres was not the least
active and envenomed.

The cause of the many attentions which were paid to me, and which, like
a vain coxcomb, I had chosen to attribute to my own personal amiability,