第898章

Never was there such impatient touchiness. "When dressing himself,[10] he throws on the floor or into the fire any part of his attire which does not suit him. . . . On gala-days and on grand ceremonial occasions his valets are obliged to agree together when they shall seize the right moment to put some thing on him. . . He tears off or breaks whatever causes him the slightest discomfort, while the poor valet who has been the means of it meets with a violent and positive proof of his anger. No thought was ever more carried away by its own speed. "His handwriting, when he tries to write, "is a mass of disconnected and undecipherable signs;[11] the words lack one-half of their letters." On reading it over himself, he cannot tell what it means. At last, he becomes almost incapable of producing a handwritten letter, while his signature is a mere scrawl. He accordingly dictates, but so fast that his secretaries can scarcely keep pace with him: on their first attempt the perspiration flows freely and they succeed in noting down only the half of what he says.

Bourrienne, de Meneval, and Maret invent a stenography of their own, for he never repeats any of his phrases; so much the worse for the pen if it lags behind, and so much the better if a volley of exclamations or of oaths gives it a chance to catch up. - Never did speech flow and overflow in such torrents, often without either discretion or prudence, even when the outburst is neither useful nor creditable the reason is that both spirit and intellect are charged to excess subject to this inward pressure the improvisator and polemic, under full headway,[12] take the place of the man of business and the statesman.

"With him," says a good observer,[13] "talking is a prime necessity, and, assuredly, among the prerogatives of high rank, he ranks first that of speaking without interruption."Even at the Council of State he allows himself to run on, forgetting the business on hand; he starts off right and left with some digression or demonstration, some invective or other, for two or three hours at a stretch,[14] insisting over and over again, bent on convincing or prevailing, and ending in demanding of the others if he is not right, "and, in this case, never failing to find that all have yielded to the force of his arguments." On reflection, he knows the value of an assent thus obtained, and, pointing to his chair, he observes:

"It must be admitted that it is easy to be brilliant when one is in that seat!"Nevertheless he has enjoyed his intellectual exercise and given way to his passion, which controls him far more than he controls it.

"My nerves are very irritable," he said of himself, "and when in this state were my pulse not always regular I should risk going crazy."[15]

The tension of accumulated impressions is often too great, and it ends in a physical break-down. Strangely enough in so great a warrior and with such a statesman, "it is not infrequent, when excited, to see him shed tears." He who has looked upon thousands of dying men, and who has had thousands of men slaughtered, "sobs," after Wagram and after Bautzen,[16] at the couch of a dying comrade. "I saw him," says his valet, "weep while eating his breakfast, after coming from Marshal Lannes's bedside; big tears rolled down his cheeks and fell on his plate." It is not alone the physical sensation, the sight of a bleeding, mangled body, which thus moves him acutely and deeply; for a word, a simple idea, stings and penetrates almost as far. Before the emotion of Dandolo, who pleads for Venice his country, which is sold to Austria, he is agitated and his eyes moisten.[17] Speaking of the capitulation of Baylen, at a full meeting of the Council of State,[18]