Your name?"
"Junot, General," was the reply.
Bonaparte frowned. "Ha! ha!" he laughed, acridly. "You jest, eh?
Well, Junot, when I am Jupiter I'll reward you."
Later on, discovering his error, Bonaparte made a memorandum
concerning Junot, which was the first link in the chain which
ultimately bound the stenographer to fame as a marshal of France.
There have been various other versions of this anecdote, but this is
the only correct one, and is now published for the first time on the
authority of M. le Comte de B--, whose grandfather was the bass
drummer upon whose drum Junot was writing the now famous letter, and
who was afterwards ennobled by Napoleon for his services in Egypt,
where, one dark, drizzly night, he frightened away from Bonaparte's
tent a fierce band of hungry lions by pounding vigorously upon his
instrument.
About this time Napoleon, who had been spelling his name in various
ways, and particularly with a "u," as Buonaparte, decided to settle
finally upon one form of designation.
"People are beginning to bother the life out of me with requests for
my autograph," he said to Bourrienne, "and it is just as well that I
should settle on one.
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