The sound of church bells was always especially pleasing to Napoleon and produced a most extraordinary effect upon him. At Malmaison he would listen to the church bell of the village of Rueil with the greatest pleasure, breaking off from any conversation in which he might be engaged to do so. “Ah!” he would say, “that sound recalls to me my early days at Brienne; how happy I was in those days!” Never, probably, did any man excite such hatred, and, on the other hand, arouse such devotion as the Emperor. When travelling in the island of Elba in 1854, my cousin, Sir Henry Drummond Wolff (then Mr. Wolff), came across an octogenarian who had been Napoleon’s gardener, and had gone with him to the palace of La Malmaison. Monsieur Holard, as this old man was called, told Mr. Wolff that though he had for ever lost his benefactor his name was graven on his heart—he had indeed made desperate efforts to follow the Emperor to St. Helena, but, not being allowed to do so, found himself, by the irony of fate, gardener to the Duke of Wellington, then (1817) residing at Mont St. Martin in the department of the Aisne. He had been recommended to the Duke by Sir Neil Campbell, and at first had had some scruples as to the propriety of entering the service of his imperial master’s conqueror. These, however, were overcome, and Monsieur Holard spoke gratefully of the kindness shown both to himself and his wife. A great favourite with the Emperor, he told how, wishing to give his master a pleasant surprise, he rose one morning early, in order to arrange a number of small flower-pots in the cyphers of each member of the imperial family. Before his task was quite finished, however, Napoleon, ever an early riser, appeared on the scene and expressed his pleasure at such an ingenious device, adding, however, that one cypher had been forgotten—one which, as he said, should have been placed first—the cypher of Queen Hortense. But Holard was not to be found wanting, for, producing a quantity of pots filled with the flower called hortensia, he explained how at that very moment he was just about to arrange the missing cypher. “Ah! Coquin,” said his master, whilst he affectionately pulled the gardener’s ear, “I have never found you fail yet.”