Doisy tells us that what seemed to be the all-absorbing subject of conversation at the Abbotsford dinner-table was Bonaparte. No matter into what other channel the talk drifted, their host would hark back to Bonaparte, and never wearied of the anecdotes and details about him which the guests were able to give. Little did his informants think that, ten years later, much that they told him would appear, as Doisy says, in a distorted form rarely favourable to the great man, in Scott’s _Life of Bonaparte_. He quotes instances, and is at no pains to hide his resentment at what he considers a not very dignified or proper proceeding on the part of Sir Walter. Only on one prominent occasion was the friendly feeling between the prisoners and the Selkirk people disturbed. On August 15, 1813, the Frenchmen, in number ninety, united to celebrate the Emperor’s birthday at their café, the windows of which opened on to the public garden. They feasted, made speeches, drank numberless toasts, and sang numberless patriotic songs. As it was found that they had a superabundance of food, it was decided to distribute it among the crowd assembled in the public garden, but with the condition that every one who accepted it should doff his hat and cry ‘Vive l’Empereur Napoléon!’ But although a couple of Frenchmen stood outside, each with a viand in one hand and a glass of liquor in the other, not a Scotsman would comply with the condition, and all went away. One man, a sort of factotum of the Frenchmen, who made a considerable deal of money out of them in one way and another, and who was known as ‘Bang Bay’, from his habit, when perplexed with much questioning and ordering, of replying ‘by and by’, did accept the food and drink, and utter the required cry, and his example was followed by a few others, but the original refusers still held aloof and gathered together in the garden, evidently in no peaceable mood. Presently, as the feast proceeded and the celebrants were listening to a song composed for the occasion, a stone was thrown through the window, and hit Captain Gruffaud of the Artillery. He rushed out and demanded who had thrown it. Seeing a young man grinning, Gruffaud accused him, and as the youth admitted it, Gruffaud let him have the stone full in the face. A disturbance being at once imminent, the French officers broke up chairs, &c., to arm themselves against an attack, and the crowd, seeing this, dispersed. Soon after, the Agent, Robert Henderson, hurried up to say that the crowd had armed themselves and were re-assembling, and that as the Frenchmen were in the wrong, inasmuch as they had exceeded their time-limit, nine o’clock, by an hour, he counselled them to go home quietly. So the matter ended, and Doisy remarks that no evil resulted, and that Scots and French became better comrades than ever.