I beg the reader in advance to give earnest attention to the event which I shall now relate.  I now become a historian, since I inscribe the painful remembrance of a striking act in the career of the Emperor; of an event which has been the subject of innumerable controversies, though it has been necessarily only a matter of surmise, since I alone knew all the painful details.  I refer to the poisoning of the Emperor at Fontainebleau.  I trust I do not need to protest my perfect truthfulness; I feel too keenly the great importance of such a revelation to allow myself to omit or add the least circumstance to the truth.  I shall therefore relate events just as they occurred, just as I saw them, and as memory, has engraved the painful details indelibly on my mind.

On the 11th of April I undressed the Emperor as usual, I think rather earlier than usual; for, if I remember aright, it was not quite half-past ten.  As he retired he appeared to me better than during the day, and in nearly the same condition he had been on previous evenings.  I slept in a room on the next floor, situated behind the Emperor’s room, with which it communicated by a small, dark staircase.  For some time past I had slept in my clothes, in order to attend the Emperor more promptly if he should call me; and I was sleeping soundly, when at midnight I was awaked by M. Pelard, who was on duty.  He told me that the Emperor had asked for me, and on opening my eyes I saw on his face an expression of alarm which astounded me.  I threw myself out of the bed, and rapidly descended the staircase, as M. Pelard added, “The Emperor has poured something in a glass and drunk it.”  I entered his Majesty’s room, a prey to indescribable anxiety.  The Emperor had lain down; but in advancing towards his bed I saw on the floor between the fireplace and the bed the little bag of black silk and skin, of which I spoke some time since.  It was the same he had worn on his neck since the campaign in Spain, and which I had guarded so carefully from one campaign to another.  Ah! if I had suspected what it contained.  In this terrible moment the truth was suddenly revealed to me!

Meanwhile, I was at the head of the Emperor’s bed.  “Constant,” said he, in a voice painfully weak and broken, “Constant, I am dying!  I cannot endure the agony I suffer, above all the humiliation of seeing myself surrounded by foreign emissaries!  My eagles have been trailed in the dust!  I have not been understood!  My poor Constant, they will regret me when I am no more!  Marmont dealt me the finishing stroke.  The wretch!  I loved him!  Berthier’s desertion has ruined me!  My old friends, my old companions in arms!” The Emperor said to me many other things which I fear I might not repeat correctly; and it may well be understood that, overwhelmed as I was with despair, I did not attempt to engrave in my memory the words which at intervals escaped the Emperor’s lips; for he did not speak continuously, and the complaints I have