On the eve of the battle, the Marshal entered the apartments of His Majesty, whom he found surrounded by several persons. The Duc de —— always affected to place himself between the Emperor and the persons who were speaking to him. The Duc de Montebello, seeing him at his favorite manœuvre, took him by the lapel of his uniform and, wheeling him round, said: "Take that off! the Emperor has no need of your wearing it here. It is singular that on the field of battle you are always so far away from us that we never see you, but here no one can say a word to the Emperor without encountering your face." The Duke was furious; he looked first at the Marshal and then at the Emperor, who contented himself with saying: "Gently, Lannes."

That evening, in the servants' hall, we talked about this apostrophe of the Marshal. An officer of the army of Egypt said that it was not surprising, because the Duc de Montebello would never forgive the Duc de —— the death of the three hundred sick men poisoned at Jaffa.

Doctor Lannefranque, one of those who attended the unfortunate Duc de Montebello, says that when mounting his horse to go to the isle of Lobau the Duke had sinister presentiments. He stopped, took the hand of M. Lannefranque, and said to him with a melancholy smile: "Au revoir: it will probably not be long before you come to find us; there will be need of you to-day, and of these gentlemen," added he, indicating several surgeons and apothecaries who happened to be with the doctor. "Monsieur le duc," responded M. Lannefranque, "this day will add yet more to your glory! . . ." "My glory!" interrupted the Marshal quickly. "Stay, shall I speak frankly to you? I don't think well of this affair; for that matter, whatever may be the result of it, this will be my last battle." The doctor was about to ask the Marshal what he meant by that, but he had put his horse to a gallop and was soon out of sight.

The Austrians had been already beaten, when between six and seven o'clock in the morning of the battle an aide-de-camp came to announce to His Majesty that the sudden rise of the Danube had set afloat a great number of large trees cut down at the time Vienna was taken, and that in drifting they had broken the bridges between Essling and the isle of Lobau; so that the parks of reserve, a part of the heavy cavalry, and the entire corps of Marshal Davoust, found themselves in forced inactivity on the other bank. This mishap prevented the forward movement the Emperor was about to make, and the enemy regained courage. Then the Duc de Montebello received orders to keep the field of battle, and took up position, resting against the village of Essling, instead of continuing the pursuit of the Austrians which he had already begun. The Duc de Montebello held out from nine o'clock in the morning until evening. At seven o'clock the battle was won; but at six o'clock the unfortunate Marshal, being on an eminence to observe the movements, was struck by a ball which fractured his right hip and the patella of the left knee.

He thought at first that he had only a few minutes to live, and caused himself to be carried on a stretcher to the Emperor, saying that he wished to embrace him before he died. The Emperor, seeing him thus bathed in his own blood, had the stretcher put down, and throwing himself on his knees, he took the Marshal in his arms and said to him, weeping: "Lannes, do you recognize me?" "Yes, Sire; . . . you are losing your best friend." — "No! no! you will live! Is it not true, M. Larrey, that you answer for his life?" Some of the wounded, hearing His Majesty speak thus, tried to rise on their elbows, and began shouting: Long live the Emperor!

The surgeons transported the Marshal to a little village on the river bank, called Ebersdorf, near the battle-field. Here they found, in the house of a brewer, a room over a stable, in which the stifling heat made still more insupportable the odor of the corpses by which the house was surrounded.

But there was nothing better to be had; it was necessary to put up with it. The Marshal underwent the amputation of his thigh with heroic courage, but the fever that set in afterwards was so violent that, fearing lest he might die under the knife, the surgeons deferred cutting off the other leg. This fever was partly the result of exhaustion; when he was wounded the Marshal had eaten nothing for twenty-four hours. At last MM. Larrey, Yvan, Paulet, and Lannefranque decided on the second amputation, and when it was over the tranquillity of the wounded man gave some hopes of saving him. But it was not to be. The fever increased and took a most alarming character, and in spite of all that could be done by these skilful surgeons and Doctor Frank, then the most celebrated physician in Europe, the Marshal breathed his last on the 31st of May, at five o'clock in the morning. He was barely forty years old.

During these eight days of agony (for the sufferings he experienced might be called by that name) the Emperor went to see him very often; he always came away in despair. I also went to see the Marshal every day, by the Emperor's desire; I admired the patience with which he supported his pain, and yet he had no hope; for he felt himself dying, and all faces told him of it. What a touching and terrible sight to see around his house, his door, and within his chamber, those old grenadiers of the guard, always impassible until then, weeping and sobbing like children! What an atrocious thing war seems in such moments as these!

The day before he died the Marshal said to me: "I see very well, my dear Constant, that I am going to die; I desire that your master may always have near him men as loyal as I have been; tell the Emperor that I wish to see him." I was about to start when the Emperor came in. Then there was a great silence; everybody left the room; but the door of the chamber remained ajar, and we could catch a part of the conversation. It was long and painful; the Marshal recalled his services to the Emperor, and ended with these words, uttered in a voice that was still loud and firm; "It is not to interest thee in my family that I speak to thee like this; I do not need to recommend my wife and children to thee; since I die for thee thy glory commands thee to protect them, and I am not afraid, in uttering these last reproaches of friendship, that I shall change thy dispositions toward them. Thou hast just committed a great fault, and although it will deprive thee of thy best friend, it will not correct thee; thy ambition is insatiable; it will ruin thee; thou sacrificest the men who serve thee best without consideration or necessity, and when they die thou dost not regret them. Thou hast none but flatterers around thee; I do not see one friend who dares to tell thee the truth. They will betray thee, they will abandon thee; make haste to end this war; it is the universal wish. Thou wilt never be more powerful; but thou mayst be much more loved. Pardon these verities from a dying man . . . he loves thee. . . ."

As he ended the Marshal offered his hand to the Emperor, who embraced him weeping and without a word.

The day the Marshal died his body was handed over to M. Larrey and M. Cadet de Gassicourt, physician in ordinary to the Emperor, with orders to prepare it as they had done that of Colonel Morland, when he was killed at the battle of Austerlitz. For this purpose the corpse was transferred to Schönbrunn and deposited in the left wing of the castle, far enough from the inhabited apartments. In a few hours it was necessary to plunge the mutilated body into a bath-tub filled with a strong solution of corrosive sublimate. This extremely dangerous operation was long and difficult. M. Cadet de Gassicourt deserves praise for the courage he displayed on this occasion; for, in spite of all precautions, and the perfumes that were burned in the chamber, this distinguished chemist was seriously indisposed.

I was one of several persons who felt a mournful curiosity to behold the body of the Marshal in this condition. It was frightful. The trunk, which was steeping in the solution, was swollen in a prodigious manner, while the head, on the contrary, which had remained outside of the bath-tub, had shrunken singularly. The muscles of the face had contracted in the most hideous manner, the wideopen eyes were starting from their sockets.

After the body had remained for eight days in the corrosive sublimate, it was put in a cask made expressly for the purpose and filled with the same liquid; it was in this cask that it made the transit from Schönbrunn to Strasburg. In the latter city it was drawn from this strange coffin, and entombed in the Egyptian fashion; that is to say, swathed in bandages and with the face uncovered. M. Larrey and M. de Gassicourt confided this honorable duty to M. Fortin, a young senior-physician who, in 1807, by his courage and indefatigable perseverance, had saved from certain death nine hundred deserted invalids, left without physicians or surgeons in a hospital near Dantzic, nearly all of whom were attacked by an epidemic malady.

In March, 1810 (what follows is an extract from a letter written by M. Fortin to his master and friend, M. Cadet de Gassicourt), Madame the Duchesse de Montebello, when passing through Strasburg in the suite of the Empress Marie-Louise, wished to see once more the husband she had so much loved.

"Thanks to your cares and those of M. de Larrey," writes M. Fortin, "the embalmment of the Marshal has succeeded perfectly. When I withdrew the body from the cask, I found it in a state of perfect preservation. In a lower room of the city hall I arranged a netting, on which I dried it by means of a stove, the heat of which was regulated. I had a very beautiful coffin made of hard wood, well smeared with wax, and now the Marshal, surrounded with bandages, and the face exposed, is deposited in his open coffin, near that of General Saint-Hilaire, in an underground room of which I have the key. A sentinel is on duty there by day and night. M. Wangen de Gueroldseck, mayor of Strasburg, has given me every facility demanded by my functions.

"Everything was in this condition when, an hour after the arrival of Her Majesty the Empress, Madame the Duchesse de Montebello, who accompanies her as a lady of honor, sent her cousin, M. Crétu, to whose house she had gone to pay a visit, to find me. I obeyed her summons. Madame la Marechale asked several questions and complimented me on the honorable mission entrusted to me, and then expressed, trembling, her desire to see for the last time the body of her husband. For several moments I hesitated to reply, and, foreseeing the effect which the sad spectacle would produce upon her, I finally said that the orders I had received were contrary to what she wished; but she insisted, in so pressing a manner, that at last I yielded to her entreaties. We agreed (as much to avoid compromising me as to prevent her from being recognized) that I would go for her at midnight, and that she should be accompanied by one of her relatives.

"I went to her house at the hour appointed. As soon as she saw me she rose and said she was ready to follow me. I permitted myself to detain her for a moment, entreating her to consult her own strength; I warned her of the state in which she would find the Marshal, and begged her to reflect on the impression she would receive from the gloomy places she was about to visit. She answered that she was well prepared, that she felt all the courage necessary, and that she hoped to receive in this last visit some alleviation of the bitter regrets that she experienced. In speaking thus, her beautiful and melancholy face was calm and thoughtful. We started. M. Crétu gave his arm to his cousin; the carriage of the Duchess followed at a distance and empty; two domestics walked behind us.

"The city was illuminated; the worthy inhabitants were in holiday attire; in many houses joyous music was exciting them to celebrate this memorable day. What a contrast between these outbursts of frank mirth and our position! At times I saw the Duchess slacken her pace, shudder, and sigh; my own heart was heavy and my mind confused.

"At last we reached the town hall; Madame de Montebello directed her servants to wait for her; she went slowly down to the underground room with her cousin and me. A lantern shed a little glimmer of light; the Duchess trembled and affected a sort of assurance; but when she entered a sort of cellar, the deathlike silence which reigned beneath this subterranean vault, the lugubrious light which illumined it, the aspect of the corpse extended in his coffin, produced a frightful effect upon the Marechale; she uttered a doleful cry and fainted. I had foreseen this accident. My whole attention was fixed upon her, and as soon as I perceived her weakness I supported her in my arms and made her sit down. I had provided myself with everything necessary to assist her; I gave her the attentions demanded by her position. After a few moments she regained consciousness; we advised her to withdraw; she refused, rose, approached the coffin, and walked round it in silence, then pausing and letting fall her clasped hands, she remained for some time motionless, gazing at the inanimate countenance of her husband, and, watering it with her tears, she came out of this state by saying, in a voice stifled by sobs: 'My God! O my God! how changed he is!' I signified to M. Crétu that it was time for us to go, but we could only get the Duchess away by promising to bring her back the next day, — a promise which was not to be performed. I promptly closed the door; I offered my arm to Madame la Marechale; she willingly accepted it, and when we had left the city hall I took leave of her; but she required me to enter her carriage, and gave orders to have me taken home first. During this short passage she shed a torrent of tears, and when the carriage stopped she said to me with inexpressible kindness: 'I shall never forget, sir, the important service you have just rendered me.' "

A long time afterwards the Emperor and the Empress Marie-Louise were visiting together the porcelain manufactory of Sèvres; the Duchesse de Montebello accompanied the Empress in the capacity of lady of honor. The Emperor, perceiving a beautiful bust of the Marshal, in unglazed porcelain, rarely executed, stopped, and without noticing the pallor which overspread the face of the Duchess, asked her how she liked the bust, and whether she thought it a good resemblance. The widow felt her wound reopen: she could not answer, and turned away in tears. It was several days before she reappeared at court. Aside from this unexpected question which had renewed her griefs, the inconceivable thoughtlessness manifested by the Emperor in putting it had wounded her so profoundly that her friends had all the trouble in the world to induce her to resume her attendance on the Empress.