Talleyrand's advice had been so punctually followed that even on the occasion of the installation of the Consular Government, while Bonaparte was receiving all the great civil and military officers of the State in the hall of presentation, Cambacérès and Lebrun stood by more like spectators of the scene than two colleagues of the First Consul. The Minister of the Interior presented the civil authorities of Paris; the Minister of War, the staff of the 17th military division; the Minister of Marine, several naval officers; and the staff of the Consular Guard was presented by Murat. As our Consular republicans were not exactly Spartans, the ceremony of the presentations was followed by grand dinner- parties. The First Consul entertained at his table, the two other Consuls, the Ministers, and the Presidents of the great bodies of the State. Murat treated the heads of the army; and the members of the Council of State, being again seated in their hackney-coaches with covered numbers, drove off to dine with Lucien.
Before taking possession of the Tuileries we had frequently gone there to see that the repairs, or rather the whitewashing, which Bonaparte had directed to be done, was executed. On our first visit, seeing a number of red caps of liberty painted on the walls, he said to M. Lecomte, at that time the architect in charge, "Get rid of all these things; I do not like to see such rubbish."
The First Consul gave directions himself for what little alterations he wanted in his own apartments. A state bed--not that of Louis XVI.--was placed in the chamber next his cabinet, on the south side, towards the grand staircase of the Pavilion of Flora. I may as well mention here that he very seldom occupied that bed, for Bonaparte was very simple in his manner of living in private, and was not fond of state, except as a means of imposing on mankind. At the Luxembourg, at Malmaison, and during the first period that he occupied the Tuileries, Bonaparte, if I may speak in the language of common life, always slept with his wife. He went every evening down to Josephine by a small staircase leading from a wardrobe attached to his cabinet, and which had formerly been the chapel of Maria de Medici. I never went to Bonaparte's bedchamber but by this staircase; and when he came to our cabinet it was always by the wardrobe which I have mentioned. The door opened opposite the only window of our room, and it commanded a view of the garden.