One day, in Egypt,[1203] on entertaining a number of French ladies at dinner, he has one of them, who was very pretty and whose husband he had just sent off to France, placed alongside of him; suddenly, as if accidentally, he overturns a pitcher of water on her, and, under the pretence of enabling her to rearrange her wet dress, he leads her into another room where he remains with her a long time, too long, while the other guests seated at the table wait quietly and exchange glances.

Another day, at Paris, toward the epoch of the Concordat,[1204] he says to Senator Volney: "France wants a religion." Volney replies in a frank, sententious way, "France wants the Bourbons." Whereupon he gives Volney a kick in the stomach and he falls unconscious; on being moved to a friend's house, he remains there ill in bed for several days .-- No man is more irritable, so soon in a passion; and all the more because he purposely gives way to his irritation; for, doing this just at the right moment, and especially before witnesses, it strikes terror; it enables him to extort concessions and maintain obedience.

His explosions of anger, half-calculated, half-involuntary, serve him quite as much as they relieve him, in public as well as in private, with strangers as with intimates, before constituted bodies, with the Pope, with cardinals, with ambassadors, with Talleyrand, with Beugnot, with anybody that comes along,[1205] whenever he wishes to set an example or "keep the people around him on the alert." The public and the army regard him as impassible; but, apart from the battles in which he wears a mask of bronze, apart from the official ceremonies in which he assumes a necessarily dignified air, impression and expression with him are almost always confounded, the inward overflowing in the outward, the action, like a blow, getting the better of him.

At Saint Cloud, caught by Josephine in the arms of another woman, he runs after the unlucky interrupter in such a way that "she barely has time to escape";[1206] and again, that evening, keeping up his fury so as to put her down completely, "he treats her in the most outrageous manner, smashing every piece of furniture that comes in his way." A little before the Empire, Talleyrand, a great mystifier, tells Berthier that the First Consul wanted to assume the title of king.

Berthier, in eager haste, crosses the drawing-room full of company, accosts the master of the house and, with a beaming smile, "congratulates him."[1207] At the word king, Bonaparte's eyes flash.