Bonaparte, waiving the usual forma of etiquette, expressed his wish to have a private conference with Lord Whitworth, the ambassador from London to Paris, and who had been the English ambassador at St. Petersburg previous to the rupture which preceded the death of Paul I. Bonaparte counted much on the effect he might produce by that captivating manner which he so well knew how to assume in conversation; but all was in vain.  In signing the treaty of Amiens the British Minister was well aware that he would be the first to break it.

About the commencement of the year 1802 Napoleon began to feel acute pains in his right side.  I have often seen him at Malmaison, when sitting up at night, lean against the right arm of his chair, and unbuttoning his coat and waistcoat exclaim,—­“What pain I feel!” I would then accompany him to his bedchamber, and have often been obliged to support him on the little staircase which led from his cabinet to the corridor.  He frequently used to say at this time, “I fear that when I am forty I shall become a great eater:  I have a foreboding that I shall grow very corpulent.”  This fear of obesity, though it annoyed him very much, did not appear to have the least foundation, judging from his habitual temperance and spare habit of body.  He asked me who was my physician.  I told him M. Corvisart, whom his brother Louis had recommended to me.  A few days after he called in Corvisart, who three years later was appointed first physician to the Emperor.  He appeared to derive much benefit from the prescriptions of Corvisart, whose open and good-humoured countenance at once made a favourable impression on him.

The pain which the First Consul felt at this time increased his irritability.  Perhaps many of the sets of this epoch of his life should be attributed to this illness.  At the time in question his ideas were not the same in the evening as they had been in the morning; and often in the morning he would tear up, even without the least remark, notes he had dictated to me at night and which he had considered excellent.  At other times I took on myself not to send to the Moniteur, as he wished me to do, notes which, dictated by annoyance and irascibility, might have produced a bad effect in Europe.  When the next day he did not see the article, I attributed this to the note being too late, or to the late arrival of the courier.  But I told him it was no loss, for it would be inserted the next day.  He did not answer at once, but a quarter of an hour afterwards he said to me, “Do not send my note to the ‘Moniteur’ without showing it to me.”  He took it and reread it.  Sometimes he was astonished at what he had dictated to me, and amused himself by saying that I had not understood him properly.  “That is not much good, is it? “—­“`Pon my word, I don’t quite know.”—­“Oh no, it is worthless; what say you?” Then he bowed his head a little, and tore up the paper.  Once when we were at the Tuileries he sent me at two o’clock in the morning a small note in his own writing, in which was, “To Bourrienne.  Write to Maret to make him erase from the note which Fleurieu has read to the Tribunate the phrase (spelt frase) concerning Costaz, and to soften as much as possible what concerns the reporter of the Tribunate.”