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, lectured, and scolded him
as if he had been his own son. There was a question at the time of
making him a sailor, less with the object of giving him a career, than of
removing him from the seductive temptations which the high position of
his brother caused to spring up incessantly around his path, and which he
had little strength to resist. It may be imagined what it cost him to
renounce pleasures so accessible and so delightful to a young man. He
did not fail to protest, on all occasions, his unfitness for sea-service,
going so far, it is said, that he even caused himself to be rejected by
the examining board of the navy as incompetent, though he could easily
have prepared himself to answer the few questions asked. However, the
will of the First Consul must be obeyed, and Jerome was compelled to
embark. On the day of which I have spoken, after some moments of
conversation and scolding, still on the subject of the navy, Jerome said
to his brother, "Instead of sending me to perish of ennui at sea, you
ought to take me for an aide-de-camp."--"What, take you, greenhorn,"
warmly replied the First Consul; "wait till a ball has furrowed your face
and then I will see about it," at the same time calling his attention to
Colonel Lacuee, who blushed, and dropped his eyes to the floor like a
young girl, for, as is well known, he bore on his face the scar made by a