You alone remain to me; your affection is very dear to me: nothing more remains to make me a misanthrope than to lose her and see you betray me....

Buy a country seat against my return, either near Paris or in Burgundy.

I need solitude and isolation: grandeur wearies me: the fount of feeling is dried up: glory itself is insipid.

At twenty-nine years of age I have exhausted everything.
It only remains to me to become a thorough egoist."[109] Many rumours were circulated as to Bonaparte's public appearance in oriental costume and his presence at a religious service in a mosque.
It is even stated by Thiers that at one of the chief festivals he repaired to the great mosque, repeated the prayers like a true Moslem, crossing his legs and swaying his body to and fro, so that he "edified the believers by his orthodox piety." But the whole incident, however attractive scenically and in point of humour, seems to be no better authenticated than the religious results about which the historian cherished so hopeful a belief.

The truth seems to be that the general went to the celebration of the birth of the Prophet as an interested spectator, at the house of the sheik, El Bekri.