With regard to the second paragraph of the postscript, "He runs always on the tips of his toes,—his shoes make no difference," this second paragraph referred to a peculiarity of my construction. Until I was four years old I walked, or rather ran—for I never walked, and I always ran—I ran, I say, on the very tips of my toes. Ellsler, compared with me, would have appeared to be dancing on his heels. From the peculiar gait I indulged in, and in spite of the fact that I did not fall more often than other children, my mother was always possessed with a fear other mothers did not share, the fear of seeing me tumble down, and she was always asking people what she could do to make me walk in a more Christian fashion.
I think it was M. Collard who advised my mother to put me into sabots. These were a kind of shoe which made it almost impossible to walk, if I did not change my nature. I ran harder than ever, it would seem, by my father's letter, only I fell more often. That caused the sabots to be abandoned.
One fine day I gave up walking on tiptoe, and began to walk like everybody else. Of course I never explained why I gave up doing this, I never admitted whether it was from whim or a more justifiable cause. But there was great rejoicing throughout the household, and the happy news was spread abroad among friends and acquaintances. M. Collard was one of the first to be informed.
In the meantime my father's health had been growing worse. He was told of a doctor called Duval, who lived at Senlis, and who had a certain repute in these parts. So we went to Senlis.
That journey left no recollection on my mind, and the only trace of it I can find is in a letter of my mother, entrusting a deed to her lawyer during her absence.
It would seem that M. Duval recommended my father to go to Paris to consult Corvisart. My father had been meaning to go there for a long while. He longed to see Brune and Murat; he hoped to obtain through their advocacy the indemnity due to him as one of the prisoners of Brindisi, and still further he hoped to obtain payment of his arrears of salary left over from the years VII and VIII.
So we set out for Paris.
That journey was quite another thing, and I remember it perfectly; not exactly the time spent in the train, but the actual arrival in Paris. It was about August or September 1805. We alighted in the rue Thiroux, at the house of a friend of my father, called Dollé. He was a little old man, who wore a grey coat, velvet breeches, striped cotton stockings and buckled shoes; his hair was dressed en ailes de pigeon, the tail tied up with black ribbon and ending like a white paintbrush. His coat collar made this tail stick up towards the heavens in a most threatening manner.
His wife must once have been very pretty, and I suspect my father had been a friend of the wife before he became acquainted with the husband.
Her name was Manette.