On his return from Egypt, the Emperor was very meagre and very yellow, his complexion coppery, his eyes sunken, his shape perfect although rather slender then. I think the portrait made by M. Horace Vernet in his picture, Une revue du premier consul sur la place du Carrousel, is very like him. His forehead was very high and open; he had not much hair, especially on the temples, but it was very fine and soft. It was of a chestnut color, and his eyes were a beautiful blue, which depicted in an incredible manner the different emotions which agitated him, sometimes extremely soft and caressing, and again severe and hard. His mouth was very beautiful, the lips smooth and somewhat contracted, especially in ill-humor. His teeth, without being very regular, were very white and very good; he never complained of them. His nose, Grecian in form, was irreproachable, and his sense of smell exceedingly keen. In fine, the ensemble of his face was regularly handsome. Nevertheless, at this epoch his extreme meagreness prevented his beauty of feature from being discerned, and gave his whole physiognomy a somewhat disagreeable effect. It would have been necessary to go over his features one by one and then recombine them in order to comprehend the perfect regularity and beauty of all. His head was large, being twenty-two inches in circumference; it was a little longer than it was wide, and consequently a trifle flattened on the temples; it was extremely sensitive, so that I had to wad his hats, and I took care to wear them several days in my own room, so as to break them in. His ears were small, perfectly shaped, and well placed. The Emperor's feet were also extremely sensitive; I had his shoes worn by a wardrobe boy named Joseph, whose foot was just like that of the Emperor.

His figure was five feet two inches three lines in height; his neck was rather short, his shoulders thrown back, his chest large and very slightly hairy, and his thigh and leg well moulded; his foot was small, with regular toes, and completely exempt from corns and callosities. His arms were well made and well attached; his hands admirable, and his nails did not disfigure them; hence he was very careful of them, as indeed of his entire person, but without being finical. He often bit his nails, but lightly; this was a sign of impatience or preoccupation.

Later he put on a good deal of flesh, but without losing the beauty of his figure; on the contrary, he looked better under the Empire than under the Consulate; his skin became very white and his color animated.

In his moments, or rather in his long hours of work and meditation, the Emperor had a particular tic which seemed to be a nervous movement, and which he retained throughout his life; it consisted in a frequent and rapid elevation of the right shoulder, which persons who did not know this habit sometimes construed into a gesture of discontent and disapprobation, and began anxiously to wonder how and in what they could have displeased him. He never thought of it for his own part, and kept on repeating the same movement without being aware of it.

A very remarkable peculiarity is that the Emperor never felt his heart beat. He has often said so both to M. Corvisart and to me, and more than once he had us pass our hands over his breast, so that we could make trial of this singular exception; we never felt any pulsation.

The Emperor ate very fast; he scarcely remained a dozen minutes at table. When he had finished dining, he rose and went into the family sitting-room; but the Empress Josephine remained, and signalled the guests to do likewise; sometimes, however, she followed His Majesty, and then the ladies of the palace doubtless indemnified themselves in their apartments, where they were served with whatever they desired.

One day when Prince Eugène rose from the table immediately after the Emperor, the latter turned and said: "But you have not had time to dine, Eugène?" "Pardon me," replied the Prince, "I dined before hand." The other guests probably thought it was not a useless precaution. It was before the Consulate that things took place in this way, for afterwards the Emperor, even while he was only first consul, dined tête-à-tête with the Empress, unless he invited some member of his household to his table, sometimes one and sometimes another, and all received this favor with joy. He had already a court at this epoch.

Most frequently, the Emperor breakfasted alone, on a round mahogany stand, and without a napkin. This repast, still shorter than the other, lasted from eight to ten minutes.

I shall say presently what disastrous effects this bad habit of eating quickly often produced upon the Emperor's health. In addition to this habit and even as a first result of his haste, the Emperor by no means ate in a cleanly manner. He preferred to use his fingers instead of a fork, or even a spoon; we were careful to put the dish he liked best within his reach. He drew it to him, in the fashion I have just described, dipping his bread in the sauce and the gravy,—which did not prevent the dish from circulating; any one ate of it who could, and there were few guests who could not. I have even seen some who seemed to consider this singular act of courage as a means of making their court. I am willing to believe also that in several their admiration for His Majesty silenced all repugnance, just as one does not scruple to eat from the plate and drink from the glass of a person one loves, even were it not wholly immaculate as to cleanliness, which one does not see, because passion is blind.

The dish the Emperor liked best was that species of chicken fricassee which has been called poulet à la Marengo on account of this preference of the conqueror of Italy. He also liked to eat beans, lentils, roast breast of mutton, and roast chicken. The simplest dishes were those he preferred; but he was not easy to please in the quality of his bread. It is not true that the Emperor made, as has been affirmed, an immoderate use of coffee. He took merely half a cup after his breakfast and another after his dinner. Still it sometimes happened, when he was preoccupied, that he took two cups in succession without noticing it. But coffee, drunk in such a quantity, disturbed and prevented the Emperor from sleeping. Often, too, he would chance to take it cold, or without sugar, or with too much. To remedy these inconveniences, the Empress Josephine took charge of pouring the Emperor his coffee, and the Empress Marie-Louise likewise this custom. When the Emperor rose from table and passed into the little salon, a page followed him, carrying a silver-gilt tray on which were a coffee-pot, a sugar-bowl, and a cup. Her Majesty the Empress poured the coffee herself, sugared it, swallowed a few drops to taste it, and offered it to the Emperor.

The Emperor drank nothing but Chambertin, and rarely pure. He did not like wine much, and was no judge of it. That reminds me that one day at the camp of Boulogne, having invited several officers to his table, His Majesty sent some of his wine to Marshal Augereau, and asked him with a certain air of satisfaction how he found it The Marshal tasted it for awhile, clacking his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and ended by saying: "There is some that is better," in not the most insinuating tone. The Emperor, although he had expected a different reply, smiled, like the rest of the guests, at the Marshal's frankness.

Everybody must have heard that His Majesty took the greatest precautions against being poisoned. That is a story to be put along with that of the balland-poniard-proof cuirass. On the contrary, the Emperor pushed his confidence much too far: his breakfast was brought every day into an antechamber open to all to whom he had accorded a private audience, and they were sometimes waiting there for hours together. His Majesty's breakfast also waited for a long time; the dishes were kept as warm as possible until he came out of his cabinet to sit down at table. Their Majesties' dinner was carried from the kitchen to the upper apartments in covered baskets; but it would not have been difficult to slip poison into them; nevertheless no attempt of the kind ever occurred to the minds of the servants, whose devotion and fidelity to the Emperor, even that of the lowest of them, surpassed all I could say about it.

The habit of eating precipitately often occasioned the Emperor violent pains in the stomach, which nearly always ended in vomiting. One day, one of the valets on duty came in a great hurry to notify me that the Emperor was urgently calling for me; that his dinner had disagreed with him and he was suffering very much. I ran to His Majesty's chamber and found him stretched at full length on the carpet; it was his habit when he felt indisposed. The Empress Josephine was sitting beside him, with his head upon her lap. He whined and stormed by turns, for the Emperor supported this sort of pain worse than the thousand more serious accidents incident to camp life; and the hero of Arcola, whose life had been risked in a hundred battles, and elsewhere than in combats, without his courage being taken unawares, showed himself more than effeminate for a trifling hurt, a bobo. Her Majesty the Empress was consoling and encouraging him as best she could; courageous herself when suffering from headaches so violent as to amount to real illness, she would willingly, had that been possible, have assumed her husband's malady, the sight of which perhaps made her suffer more than he did. "Constant," she said as soon as I entered, "come quickly, the Emperor needs you; make him some tea and do not leave him until he is better." His Majesty had hardly taken three cups when his pain diminished; he still kept his head on the knees of the Empress, who caressed his forehead with her white, plump hand, and also rubbed his chest. "Do you feel better? Will you lie down a little? I will stay by your bed with Constant." Was not this tenderness very touching? especially in so lofty a rank? The nature of my duties often gave me opportunities of enjoying this picture of happy family life.

While I am on the subject of the Emperor's maladies, I will say a few words of his most serious one, if we except that which caused his death.

At the siege of Toulon, in 1793, when the Emperor was still only a colonel of artillery, a gunner was killed at his piece. Colonel Bonaparte seized the rammer and fired several discharges himself. The unfortunate artillery-man had, or rather had had, an itch of the most malignant description, and the Emperor was infected by it. It was years before he could be cured, and the doctors thought that this badly treated malady was the cause of the extreme meagreness and the bilious hue which he long retained. At the Tuileries he used sulphur baths, and for some time wore a blister. Until then he had always refused, saying that he had no time to nurse himself. M. Corvisart had strongly insisted on a cautery. But the Emperor, who was bent on preserving the shape of his arm intact, declined this remedy.

It was at the same siege that he had been promoted from the rank of chief of battalion to that of colonel, at the close of a brilliant affair against the English, in which he had received a bayonet thrust in his right thigh, the scar of which he often showed me. The wound he received in the foot at the battle of Ratisbonne left no trace, and yet when the Emperor got it the whole army was alarmed.

We were about twelve hundred feet from Ratisbonne, when the Emperor, seeing the Austrians flying in all directions, thought the affair was ended. His canteen breakfast had been made ready in the place the Emperor had designated. He was walking toward this spot, when, turning to Marshal Berthier, he exclaimed: "I am wounded." The blow had been so forcible that the Emperor had fallen into a sitting posture; he had, in fact, just received a ball in the heel. The calibre of this ball showed that it had been fired by a Tyrolese rifleman, whose weapon usually carries as far as we were from the city. It may readily be believed that such an event soon spread trouble and alarm throughout the staff. An aide-de-camp came to look for me, and when I arrived, I found M. Ivan engaged in cutting off His Majesty's boot, and I assisted in dressing the wound.

Although the pain was still very keen, the Emperor would not even wait to have his boot put on again, but to give the enemy his change and reassure the army, he mounted a horse and set off at a gallop, with all his staff, and went through all the lines. On that day, as one may imagine, nobody breakfasted, and everybody went to Ratisbonne for dinner.

His Majesty had an invincible repugnance for all medicaments, and when he took any, which very seldom happened, it was some broth of chicken or of chicory, and salts of tartar. M. Corvisart had advised him to reject any drink which had an acrid and disagreeable taste; I think it was through fear that some one might try to poison him.

No matter at what hour the Emperor might have gone to bed, I entered his chamber between seven and eight o'clock in the morning. I have said already that his first questions invariably related to the time and the weather. Sometimes he complained to me of looking badly. When that was true, I agreed to it, as I said no when I did not think so. In this case he would pull my ears, call me laughingly a great stupid, ask for a mirror, and often own that he had wanted to deceive me, and that he was very well. He took his newspapers, asked the names of those who were in the waiting-room, said whom he would see, and chatted with one or another. When M. Corvisart came, he entered without waiting for an order. The Emperor liked to tease him by talking about medicine, saying that it was only a conjectural art, that doctors were charlatans, and giving proofs of this, especially from his own experience. The doctor never gave in when he believed himself in the right.
 

During these conversations the Emperor was shaving himself, for I had at last succeeded in inducing him to take this matter solely into his own hands. He often forgot that he had shaved only one side. I apprised him of it; he would laugh and finish his work. M. Ivan, ordinary surgeon, had, like M. Corvisart, his full share of criticisms and hard sayings against his art. These discussions were most amusing; the Emperor at such times was very gay and talkative, and I think that when he had no convenient example to cite in support of his arguments, he did not scruple to invent one. Nor did these gentlemen believe themselves always on their parole. One day, His Majesty, following his singular habit, took the notion to pull the ears of one of his physicians (M. Halle, I think). The physician drew back quickly, exclaiming: "Sire, you hurt me!'' Perhaps the remark was seasoned with a spice of ill-humor, and perhaps also the doctor was right. However that might be, his ears were never in danger from that day.

Sometimes, before my duties began, His Majesty would question me on what I had done the day before. He would ask if I had dined in the city, and with whom, if they had received me well, and what we had for dinner. Sometimes, too, he wanted to know what such or such a part of my clothes cost me. I would tell him, and then the Emperor would exclaim at the price, and say that, when he was a sublieutenant, everything was a good deal cheaper, and that he had often dined at Rose's, a restaurant keeper of that day, and that he dined there very well for forty sous. Several times he talked to me about my family, of my sister, who was a nun before the Revolution, and who had been forced to leave her convent. One day he asked me if she had a pension, and how much it was. I told him, and added that it was not sufficient for her needs, and that I gave her a pension myself, and to my mother also. His Majesty told me to address myself to the Duc de Bassano, that he might make his report on the subject, as he wished to benefit my family. I did not profit by this good intention of His Majesty; for at that time I was so happy as to be able to aid my relatives. I did not think of the future, which it seemed to me could change nothing in my lot, and I scrupled at putting my family, so to say, at the expense of the State. I own that I have since been more than once disposed to repent of this excess of delicacy, the example of which I have seen few persons, whether above or below my position, willing either to give or take.

On rising, the Emperor usually took a cup of tea or of orange-water; if he took a bath, it was immediately on leaving his bed, and while in it he had his despatches and journals read to him by a secretary (by M. de Bourrienne until 1804); when he did not take a bath, he sat down by the fire for the same purpose, unless he read his papers himself, as he often did. He dictated to his secretary his responses and the observations suggested to him by what he saw in the journals. As fast as he ran through them, he threw them on the floor in a disorderly heap. The secretary afterwards gathered them up, put them in order, and carried them into the private cabinet.

Before making his toilet, His Majesty put on in summer a pair of white piqué trousers and a white dressing-gown of the same material; in winter these were replaced by others of a soft woollen goods called molleton. On his head he wore a bandana handkerchief, knotted over the forehead, the two ends of which fell down to his neck behind. The Emperor himself put on this elegant coiffure in the evening. When he left the bath, another bandana was handed him, because that he had on was always wet, as he was constantly turning in the water. The bath over or the despatches read, he began his toilet. I shaved him before I had taught him to shave himself. When the Emperor first acquired this habit, he availed himself, like everybody else, of a mirror attached to the window; but he came so near it, and besmeared himself so recklessly with soap, that the glass, the window panes, the curtains, and his own dress were covered with it. To remedy this inconvenience, a council of attendants was summoned, and it was resolved that Roustan should hold the mirror for His Majesty. When the Emperor had shaved one side, he turned the other to the light and made Roustan go from left to right or from right to left, according to the side on which he had begun. The toilet-table was transferred in like manner. His shaving over, the Emperor washed his face and hands, and carefully attended to his nails, afterwards I took off his flannel waistcoat and his shirt, and rubbed the whole chest with an extremely soft silk brush. I rubbed him afterwards with Cologne water, a great deal of which be consumed in this manner; for he was brushed and arranged in this way every day. It was in the Orient that he had acquired this hygienic habit, which he found very good, and which is, in fact, excellent. All these preparatives being terminated, I put a pair of light flannel or cashmere socks on his feet, and over them white silk stockings (he never wore any others), drawers of very fine linen or twilled cotton, and sometimes of white cashmere with soft riding-boots, and sometimes tights of the same stuff and color, with little English boots which reached to the middle of his calf. They were provided with small silver spurs, not more than six lines long. All his boots were spurred in this way. Then I put on his flannel waistcoat and his shirt, a very fine muslin cravat, and above it a black silk stock; finally a short vest of white piqué, and either a riding-coat or that of a grenadier, but more frequently the former. His toilet finished, his handkerchief, his snuffbox, and a little shell box filled with licorice flavored with aniseed and cut very fine, were handed to him. It is plain, from all this, that the Emperor had himself dressed from head to foot; he never put a hand to anything, but let himself be treated like a child, and during this process he occupied himself with his affairs.

I forgot to say that for his teeth he used a wooden toothpick and a brush dipped in an opiate.

The Emperor was born, one might say, to be waited on by valets de chambre. While yet a general he had three, and he was served with as much luxury as when in the highest station; from that period he received all the attentions which I have just described, and which it was almost impossible for him to dispense with. Etiquette changed nothing in this respect; it augmented the number of his attendants, decorated them with new titles, but it could not surround him with more attentions. He very rarely submitted to the grand etiquette of royalty; never, for example, did the grand chamberlain put on his shirt for him; once only, at the repast which the city of Paris offered him at the time of his coronation, the grand marshal held the basin for him to wash his hands. I shall describe his toilet on the coronation day, and it will be seen that even then His Majesty the Emperor of the French required no other ceremonial than that to which General Bonaparte and the First Consul of the Republic had been accustomed.

The Emperor had no fixed hour for retiring; sometimes he went to bed at ten or eleven o'clock in the evening, but more frequently he sat up until two, three, or four in the morning. He was very quickly undressed, for it was his habit, on entering his chamber, to throw each piece of his apparel in every direction; his coat on the floor, his grand cordon on the carpet, his watch flying on the bed, his hat to a distance on a chair, and thus with all his garments, one after another. When he was in a good humor he called me in a loud voice with this sort of cry: "Ohe! oh! oh!" At other times, when he was dissatisfied, it was: "Monsieur! Monsieur Constant!" At all seasons it was necessary to warm his bed; he never dispensed with this except in the greatest heats. His habit of undressing himself in haste sometimes gave me nothing to do on coming in but to present him with his bandana; afterwards I lighted his night lamp, which was in silver-gilt, and shaded, so as to give less light. When he did not go to sleep at once, he had one of his secretaries called, or else the Empress Josephine, to read to him; no one could perform this office better than Her Majesty, and the Emperor preferred her to any other reader; she read with that especial charm which blended with all her actions. By the Emperor's orders, we burned in his chamber, in little silver-gilt vessels, either aloe-wood or else sugar or vinegar. It was necessary to have fire in all his apartments nearly all the year; he was habitually very sensitive to cold. When he was ready to sleep, I re-entered, took his light, and went up to my own room, which was directly above that of His Majesty. Roustan and a valet de chambre on duty slept in the little salon adjoining the Emperor's chamber. If he needed me in the night, a wardrobe boy, who slept close by, in the antechamber, came to look for me. Day and night water was kept hot for his bath; for often, at any hour of the day or night, he took a notion to have one. M. Ivan made his appearance every night and morning at the couchee and levee of His Majesty.

It is known that the Emperor often had his secretaries and even his ministers summoned during the night. During his stay in Warsaw, in 1806, Prince de Talleyrand once received a message after midnight; he came at once and talked for a long time with the Emperor; the work was prolonged far into the night, and His Majesty, fatigued, at last fell into a profound sleep. The Prince de Benevento, who feared that if he went out he would awaken the Emperor, and perhaps be called back to continue the conversation, looked around him and perceiving a convenient sofa, stretched himself upon it and went to sleep. M. de Menneval, His Majesty's secretary, was unwilling to go to bed until after M. de Talleyrand should have withdrawn, as the Emperor might need him after the minister's departure; hence he was very impatient at this long audience. Nor was I in a better humor; for it was impossible for me to go to bed until I had taken away His Majesty's light. M. de Menneval came to me ten times to ask whether Prince de Talleyrand was gone. "He is still there," said I, "I am sure of it, and yet I hear nothing." At last I begged him to stay in the room where I was, and on which the entrance door opened, while I would go and stand sentry in a private cabinet into which the Emperor's chamber had another exit; and it was agreed that whichever of the two should see the Prince go out, should notify the other. Two o'clock struck, then three, then four; no one appeared; not the slightest movement in the chamber of His Majesty. Losing patience at last, I pushed the door ajar as softly as possible; but the Emperor, who was always a light sleeper, awoke with a start and loudly demanded: "Who is there? who goes there ? who is it?" I replied that, thinking that the Prince de Benevento had gone out, I had come to take the light. "Talleyrand! Talleyrand!" His Majesty exclaimed quickly; "where is he then?" and seeing him wake up: "Well, I believe he fell asleep! How, you rascal, you sleep in my house! ah! ah!" I went away without taking the light; they began talking again, and M. de Menneval and I waited the end of the tête-à-tête until five o'clock in the morning.

The Emperor had been accustomed to take coffee with cream, or else chocolate when working at night; but he had abandoned the habit, and under the Empire he no longer took anything, unless at times, but very rarely, either some punch almost as weak as lemonade, or an infusion of orange flowers or tea.

The Emperor, who endowed the majority of his generals so magnificently, who was so liberal to his armies, and to whom, on the other hand, France owes so many fine monuments, was not at all generous, but, if I must say it, a little miserly in his household. Perhaps he somewhat resembled those rich vain persons who economize very closely at home in order to shine more brilliantly abroad. He made very few, not to say no presents, to his attendants. Even New Year's day passed without unloosening his purse-strings. "Well, Monsieur Constant," said he to me, pinching my ear, "what are you going to give me for New Year's?" The first time he asked this question, I replied that I would give him whatever he liked, but I confess that I greatly hoped that on the next day it would not be I who would give presents. It seems that the idea never occurred to him; for no one was called on to thank him for his gifts, and never afterwards did he depart from this rule of domestic economy. Apropos of this ear-pinching to which I return so many times, because His Majesty himself returned to it so often, I must say while I think of it, and to be done with it, that it would be a great mistake to suppose that he contented himself with lightly touching the part exposed to his marks of favor; he squeezed very roughly, to the contrary, and I have remarked that he pinched hardest when he was in the best humor. Sometimes, as I was entering his room to dress him, he would rush at me like a madman, and while saluting me with his favorite greeting: "Eh bien, monsieur le drôle?" would pinch both ears at once in a way to make me cry out; it was not even rare for him to add to these soft caresses one or two slaps very well laid on; I was sure then of finding him in a charming humor all the rest of the day, and full of benevolence, as I have so often seen him. Roustan, and even Marshal Berthier, Prince de Neufchâtel, received their own good share of these imperial marks of affection; I have frequently seen them with their cheeks all red and their eyes almost weeping.