trot and jump fences and ditches, may be found in his correspondence;
every stray impulse to take the lead, even when justified by an
unforeseen urgency and with the most evident good intention, is
suppressed as a deviation, is arrested with a brusque roughness which
strains the loins and weakens the knees of the delinquent. The
amiable Prince Eugene, so obedient and so loyal,[77] is thus warned:

"If you want orders or advice from His Majesty in the alteration of
the ceiling of your room you should wait till you get them; were Milan
burning and you asked orders for putting out the fire, you should let
Milan burn until you got them. . . His Majesty is displeased, and very
much displeased, with you; you must never attempt to do his work.
Never does he like this, and he will never forgive it."

This enables us to judge of his tone with subalterns. The French
battalions are refused admission into certain places in Holland:[78]

"Announce to the King of Holland, that if his ministers have acted on
their own responsibility, I will have them arrested and all their
heads cut off."

He says to M. de Ségur, member of the Academy commission which had
just approved M. de Chateaubriand's discourse:[79]

"You, and M. de Fontaines, as state councillor and grand master, I
ought to put in Vincennes. . . . Tell the second class of the
Institute that I will have no political subjects treated at its
meetings. . . . .If it disobeys, I will break it up like a bad club.

Even when not angry or scolding,[80] when the claws are drawn in, one