al world. What can be more offensively trifling, than the
conduct which Napoleon narrates of himself, when Emperor, at Warsaw.

A Madame Waleska seems to have been the general belle of the city. On
the night when Napoleon first saw this woman, at a ball, General
Bertrand and Louis de Perigord appeared as her public admirers. "They
both," said he, "kept hovering emulously round her." But Napoleon,
Emperor, husband, and mature as he was, chose to play the gallant on
this evening also. Finding the two Frenchmen in the way of his
attentions, he played the Emperor with effect on the spot. He gave an
order to Berthier, then head of his staff, instantly to send off M.
Perigord "to obtain news of the 6th corps," which was on the Passarge.
Thus one inconvenience was got rid of, but Bertrand was still present,
and during supper his attentions were so marked that, as he leaned over
Madame's chair, his aiguilettes danced on her shoulders. "Upon this,"
said Napoleon, "my impatience was roused to such a pitch that I touched
him on the arm and drew him to the recess of a window, where I gave him
orders 'to set out for the head-quarters of Prince Jerome,' and without
losing an hour to bring me a report of the siege of Breslau." Such it is
to come in the way of Emperors. "The poor fellow was scarcely gone,"
adds Napoleon, "when I repented of my angry impulse; and I should
certainly have recalled him, had I not remembered at the same minute
that his presence with Jerome would be useful to me." And this was the
conduct of a man then in the highest position of life, whose example
must have been a model to the multitude, and in whom even frivolity
would be a crime.

Napoleon had long lived in a state of nervous fear, which must have made
even his high position comfortless to him. He had been for years in
dread of poison. "I have escaped poisoning," said he, "ten times, if I
have once." In St Helena he never eat or drank any thing which had not
been tasted first by one of the household! Montholon, during the night,
constantly tasted the drink prepared for him. On this subject, Napoleon
told the following anecdote.

"He was one day leaving the dinner-table with the Empress Josephine, and
two or three other persons, when, as he was about to put his hand in his
pocket for his snuff-box, he perceived it lying on the mantel-piece, in
the saloon which he was entering. He was about to open it and take a
pinch, when his good star caused him to sea