Note 229 — Chapter LXIII
Reading edition
"He certainly had a long conversation with me, which he misrepresents, as might be expected; and it was at the very moment when he was delivering a long prosing speech, which appeared to me a mere string of absurdity and impertinence, that I scrawled on the corner of the chimney-piece the order to withdraw him from his embassy, and to send him as soon as possible to France; a circumstance which was the cause of a good deal of merriment at the time, and which the abbé seems very desirous of concealing."—Napoleon, Las Cases, tom. ii., p. 94.