break, accounts for his sleeping
near Charleroi. The same explanation probably holds good as to his
occasional drowsiness at Waterloo. He scarcely closed his eyes before
3.30 a.m.; and he cannot have been physically fit for the unexpectedly
long and severe strain of that Sunday. That he began the day well we
know from a French soldier named Barral (grandfather of the author of
"L'Epopee de Waterloo"), who looked at him carefully at 9.30 a.m., and
wrote: "He seemed to me in very good health, extraordinarily active
and preoccupied." Decoster, the peasant guide who was with Napoleon
the whole day, afterwards told Sir W. Scott that he was calm and
confident up to the crisis. Gourgaud, who clung to him during the
flight to Paris and thence to Rochefort, notes nothing more serious
than great fatigue; Captain Maitland, when he received him on board
the "Bellerophon," thought him "a remarkably strong, well-built man."
During the voyage to St. Helena he suffered from nothing worse than
_mal de mer_; he ate meat in exceptional quantity, even in the
tropics.

Very noteworthy, too, is Lavalette's narrative. When he saw Napoleon
before his departure from Paris to the Belgian frontier, he found him
suffering from depression and a pain in the chest; but he avers that,
on the return from Waterloo, apart from one "frightful epileptic
laugh," Napoleon speedily settled down to his ordinary behaviour: not
a word is added as to his health. (Sir W. Scott, "Life of Napoleon,"
vol. viii., p. 496; Gourgaud, "Campagne de 1815," and "Journal de St.
Helene," vol. ii., Appendix 32; "Narrative of Captain Maitland," p.
208; Lavalette, "Mems.," ch. xxxiii.; Houssaye ridicules the stories
of his ill-health.)

What is the upshot of it all? The evidence seems to show that,
whatever was Napoleon's condition before the campaign, he was in his
usual health amidst the stern joys of war. And this is consonant with
his previous experience: he throve on events which wore ordinary
beings to the bone: the one thing that he could not endure was the
worry of parliamentary opposition, which aroused a nervous irritation
not to be controlled and concealed without infinite effort. During the
campaign we find very few trustworthy proofs of his decline and much
that points to energy of resolve and great rallying power after
exertion. If he was suffering from three illnesses, they were
assuredly of a highly intermittent nature.

* * * *