A GLIMPSE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1264, 21 May 1896, Page 11

A GLIMPSE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.

Something seriously amiss with Napoleon was noticeable as he grew info middle life. Ho was often sullen and morose, often violent and even hysterical. To calm his nervous agitation the Court physician ordered warm baths, which he spent hours in taking. Then again he was irregular in his habits, being often Bomnolent during the daytime, but as frequently breaking his rest at midnight to set the pens of his secretaries scampering to keep pace with the flow of his speech. With old friends he was coarse and severe ; even the brutal Vandamrne confessed that he trembled before that “ devil of a man," while Cannes was the only human being who still dared to use the familiar “thou" in addressing his old comrade. To the face of his generals the Emperor was merely cold ; behind their backs he sneered, saying, for instance, of Davoust, that he might give him never so much renown, ho would not be able to carry it ; of Ney, that lie was disposed to ingratitude and turbulence ; of Bessiercs, Oudinot, an 1 Victor, that they were mere mediocrities.

Of the ancient nobility the Emperor once said with a sneer :—“ I offered them rank in my army : they declined the service. I opened my antechambers to them : they rushed in and filled thorn.” To this sweeping statement there are many noteworthy exceptions, but ort the whole Napoleon never classed the estate of the French nobles lower than they deserved. Still they had a power which ho roc ignisod, and it was with a sort of grim humour that lie began to distribute honours and the sops of pitronage among both the old and the new aristocrac) a process which only undo the latter independent, and failed to win the affection i of the former.

Ho was furious at times with the venality of liis associates. .Talleyrand once admitted that ho had taken sixty millions from various German Princes. Maasona, Augeroau, Bruno, and Junot were not so colossal in their greed, but they wore equally ill-di posed, and very successful in lining their coders. With Talleyrand Napoleon never joked ; but when ho wished to give the others warning he drew a bill for some enormous gum on one or other of them, and deposited it with a banker. There is no evidence that such a draft was ever dis honoured. On one occasion Massena disg >r.?ud two millions of francs in this way. --Professor Sin urn's “Life of Nap >!eon, in (ho ?il well Century.