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