If ever the Bourbons get back they will hang you." One day Cambaceres lost his temper, and with a twist of his head he pulled his ear from the living pincers that held it.
"Come," he said, "have done with your foolish joking." Whenever Bonaparte escaped any danger, a childish habit, a Corsican habit, reappeared; he always made a rapid sign of the cross on his breast with the thumb.
Whenever he met with any annoyance, or was haunted with a disagreeable thought, he hummed--what air?
An air of his own that was no air at all, and which nobody ever noticed, he sang so false.

Then, still singing, he would sit down before his writing desk, tilting in his chair, tipping it back till he almost fell over, and mutilating, as we have said, its arms with a penknife, which served no other purpose, inasmuch as he never mended a pen himself.

His secretaries were charged with that duty, and they mended them in the best manner possible, mindful of the fact that they would have to copy that terrific writing, which, as we know, was not absolutely illegible.
The effect produced on Bonaparte by the ringing of bells is known.

It was the only music he understood, and it went straight to his heart.

If he was seated when the vibrations began he would hold up his hand for silence, and lean toward the sound.