and games of hazard, especially vingt-et-un:  he began to learn “le wisth” from our officers.  Sometimes he and Gourgaud amused themselves by extracting the square and cube roots of numbers; he also began to learn English from Las Cases.  On some occasions he diverted his male companions with tales of his adventures, both military and amorous.  His interest in the ship and in the events of the voyage did not flag.  When a shark was caught and hauled up, “Bonaparte with the eagerness of a schoolboy scrambled on the poop to see it.”

His health continued excellent.  Despite his avoidance of vegetables and an excessive consumption of meat, he suffered little from indigestion, except during a few days of fierce sirocco wind off Madeira.  He breakfasted about 10 on meat and wine, and remained in his cabin reading, dictating, or learning English, until about 3 p.m., when he played games and took exercise preparatory to dinner at 5.  After a full meal, in which he partook by preference of the most highly dressed dishes of meat, he walked the deck for an hour or more.  On one evening, the Admiral begged to be excused owing to a heavy equatorial rain-storm; but the ex-Emperor went up as usual, saying that the rain would not hurt him any more than the sailors; and it did not.  The incident claims some notice:  for it proves that, whatever later writers may say as to his decline of vitality in 1815, he himself was unaware of it, and braved with impunity a risk that a vigorous naval officer preferred to avoid.  Moreover, the mere fact that he was able to keep up a heavy meat diet all through the tropics bespeaks a constitution of exceptional strength, unimpaired as yet by the internal malady which was to be his doom.

That one element of conviviality was not wanting at meals will appear from the official return of the consumption of wine at the Admiral’s table by his seven French guests and six British officers:  Port, 20 dozen; Claret, 45 dozen; Madeira, 22 dozen; Champagne, 13 dozen; Sherry, 7 dozen; Malmsey, 5 dozen.[546] The “Peruvian” had been detached from the squadron to Guernsey to lay in a stock of French wines specially for the exiles; and 15 dozen of claret—­Napoleon’s favourite beverage—­were afterwards sent on shore at St. Helena for his use.

Doubtless the evenness of his health, which surprised Cockburn, Warden, and O’Meara alike, was largely due to his iron will.  He knew that his exile must be disagreeable, but he had that useful faculty of encasing himself in the present, which dulls the edge of care.  Besides, his tastes were not so exacting, or his temperament so volatile, as to shroud him in the gloom that besets weaker natures in time of trouble.  Alas for him, it was far otherwise with his companions.  The impressionable young Gourgaud, the thought-wrinkled Las Cases, the bright pleasure-loving Montholons, the gloomy Grand Marshal, Bertrand, and his mercurial consort, over whose face there often passed “a gleam of distraction”—­these were not fashioned for a life of adversity.  Thence came the long spells of ennui, broken by flashes of temper, that marked the voyage and the sojourn at St. Helena.