The decease of a great man is always affecting:  but the death of the hero who had soared to the zenith of military glory and civic achievement seems to touch the very nadir of calamity.  Outliving his mighty Empire, girt around by a thousand miles of imprisoning ocean, guarded by his most steadfast enemies, his son a captive at the Court of the Hapsburgs, and his Empress openly faithless, he sinks from sight like some battered derelict.  And Nature is more pitiless than man.  The Governor urges on him the best medical advice:  but he will have none of it.  He feels the grip of cancer, the disease which had carried off his father and was to claim the gay Caroline and Pauline.  At times he surmises the truth:  at others he calls out “le foie” “le foie.”  Meara had alleged that his pains were due to a liver complaint brought on by his detention at St. Helena; Antommarchi described the illness as gastric fever (febbre gastrica pituitosa); and not until Dr. Arnott was called in on the 1st of April was the truth fully recognized.

At the close of the month the symptoms became most distressing, aggravated as they were by the refusal of the patient to take medicine or food, or to let himself be moved.  On May 4th, at Dr. Arnott’s insistence, some calomel was secretly administered and with beneficial results, the patient sleeping and even taking some food.  This was his last rally:  on the morrow, while a storm was sweeping over the island, and tearing up large trees, his senses began to fail:  Montholon thought he heard the words France, armee, tete d’armee, Josephine:  he lingered on insensible for some hours:  the storm died down:  the sun bathed the island in a flood of glory, and, as it dipped into the ocean, the great man passed away.

By the Governor’s orders Dr. Arnott remained in the room until the body could be medically examined—­a precaution which, as Montchenu pointed out, would prevent any malicious attempt on the part of the Longwood servants to cause death to appear as the result of poisoning.  The examination, conducted in the presence of seven medical men and others, proved that all the organs were sound except the ulcerated stomach; the liver was rather large, but showed no signs of disease; the heart, on the other hand, was rather under the normal size.  Far from showing the emaciation that usually results from prolonged inability to take food, the body was remarkably stout—­a fact which shows that that tenacious will had its roots in an abnormally firm vitality.[590]

After being embalmed, the body was laid out in state, and all beholders were struck with the serene and beautiful expression of the face:  the superfluous flesh sank away after death, leaving the well-proportioned features that moved the admiration of men during the Consulate.