unded her to the heart: yet she found sufficient strength of mind,
to suppress her sorrows, and console ours. She was attentive to the
Emperor, she was attentive to us, with such constant solicitude, such
perfect courteousness, that you would have supposed, she had nothing
to think of but the misfortunes of others. If the fate of Napoleon and
of France drew from us groans or imprecations, she ran to us; and,
restraining her own tears, reminded us with the wisdom of a
philosopher, and the sweetness of an angel, that we should surmount
our sorrows and regrets, and submit with docility to the decrees of
Providence.

Napoleon was roused by the shock, that his departure from the Elyseum
gave him. At Malmaison he recovered his spirit, his activity, his
energy. Accustomed to see all his wishes, all his enterprises, crowned
with success, he had not learned, to contend against the sudden
attacks of misfortune; and, notwithstanding the firmness of his
character, they threw him occasionally into a state of irresolution,
during which a thousand thoughts, a thousand designs, jostled each
other in his mind, and deprived him of the possibility of coming to
any decision. But this moral catalepsy was not the effect of a
cowardly dejection, as has been asserted. His great mind remained
erect amid the temporary numbness of his faculties; and Napoleon, when
he awoke, was but so much the more terrible, and the more formidable.

A few minutes after his arrival, he was desirous of addressing once
more his old companions in arms, and expressing to them for the last
time his sentiments and regrets. The affection he bore them, and his
despair at being unable to avenge at their head the affront received
at Mont St. Jean, made him forget in his first sketch of a
proclamation, that he had broken with his own hands his sceptre and
his sword. He soon perceived, that the impassioned style, in which he
addressed his army, was not such, as his abdication imposed on him:
and accordingly he substituted the following address in the place of
the too animated effusions of his heart.

"_Napoleon to the brave Soldiers of the Army before Paris._

"Malmaison, June the 25th, 1815.

"Soldiers,

"While I yield to the necessity, that compels me to retire from the
brave French army, I carry with me the pleasing certainty, that it
will justify, by the eminent services its country expects from it,
those praises, which our ene