Never was there such impatient touchiness. "When dressing
himself,[10] he throws on the floor or into the fire any part of his
attire which does not suit him. . . . On gala-days and on grand
ceremonial occasions his valets are obliged to agree together when
they shall seize the right moment to put some thing on him. . . He
tears off or breaks whatever causes him the slightest discomfort,
while the poor valet who has been the means of it meets with a violent
and positive proof of his anger. No thought was ever more carried
away by its own speed. "His handwriting, when he tries to write, "is
a mass of disconnected and undecipherable signs;[11] the words lack
one-half of their letters." On reading it over himself, he cannot tell
what it means. At last, he becomes almost incapable of producing a
handwritten letter, while his signature is a mere scrawl. He
accordingly dictates, but so fast that his secretaries can scarcely
keep pace with him: on their first attempt the perspiration flows
freely and they succeed in noting down only the half of what he says.
Bourrienne, de Meneval, and Maret invent a stenography of their own,
for he never repeats any of his phrases; so much the worse for the pen
if it lags behind, and so much the better if a volley of exclamations
or of oaths gives it a chance to catch up. - Never did speech flow and
overflow in such torrents, often without either discretion or
prudence, even when the outburst is neither useful nor creditable the
reason is that both spirit and intellect are charged to excess subject
to this inward pressure the improvisator and polemic, under full
headway,[12] take the place of the man of business and the statesman.

"With him," says a good observer,[13] "talking is a prime necessity,
and, assuredly, among the prerogatives of high rank, he ranks first
that of speaking without interruption."