and that it had been caused by poison, obtained no credit.  I should add that Toussaint wrote a letter to Bonaparte; but I never saw in it the expression attributed to him, “The first man of the blacks to the first man of the whites” Bonaparte acknowledged that the black leader possessed energy, courage, and great skill.  I am sure that he would have rejoiced if the result of his relations with St. Domingo had been something else than the kidnaping and transportation of Toussaint.

Leclerc, after fruitless efforts to conquer the colony, was himself carried off by the yellow fever.  Rochambeau succeeded him by right of seniority, and was as unsuccessful as Menou had been in Egypt.  The submission of the blacks, which could only have been obtained by conciliation, he endeavoured to compel by violence.  At last, in December 1803, he surrendered to an English squadron, and abandoned the island to Dessalines.

Bonaparte often experienced severe bodily pain, and I have now little doubt, from the nature of his sufferings, that they were occasioned by the commencement of that malady which terminated his life at St. Helena.  These pains, of which he frequently complained, affected him most acutely on the night when he dictated to me the instructions for General Leclerc.  It was very late when I conducted him to his apartment.  We had just been taking a cup of chocolate, a beverage of which we always partook when our business lasted longer than one o’clock in the morning.  He never took a light with him when he went up to his bedroom.  I gave him my arm, and we had scarcely got beyond the little staircase which leads to the corridor, when he was rudely run against by a man who was endeavouring to escape as quickly as possible by the staircase.  The First Consul did not fall because I supported him.  We soon gained his chamber, where we, found Josephine, who, having heard the noise, awoke greatly alarmed.  From the investigations which were immediately made it appeared that the uproar was occasioned by a fellow who had been keeping an assignation and had exceeded the usual hour for his departure.

On the 7th of January 1802 Mademoiselle Hortense was married to Louis Bonaparte.  As the custom was not yet resumed of adding the religious ceremony to the civil contract, the nuptial benediction was on this occasion privately given by a priest at the house Rue de la Victoire.  Bonaparte also caused the marriage of his sister Caroline,—­[The wife of Murat, and the cleverest of Bonaparte’s sisters.]—­which had taken place two years earlier before a mayor, to be consecrated in the same manner; but he and his wife did not follow the example.  Had he already, then, an idea of separating from Josephine, and therefore an unwillingness to render a divorce more difficult by giving his marriage a religious sanction?  I am rather inclined to think, from what he said to me, that his neglecting to take a part in the religious ceremony arose from indifference.