on this miserable rock.”—­“We returned,” says Antommarchi, “into his chamber.  Napoleon lay down’ in bed.  ‘Close my windows,’ he said; leave me to myself; I will send for you by-and-by.  What a delightful thing rest is!  I would not exchange it for all the thrones in the world!  What an alteration!  How I am fallen!  I, whose activity was boundless, whose mind never slumbered, am now plunged into a lethargic stupor, so that it requires an effort even to raise my eyelids.  I sometimes dictated to four or five secretaries, who wrote as fast as words could be uttered, but then I was Napoleon—­now I am no longer anything.  My strength—­my faculties forsake me.  I do not live—­I merely exist.’”

From this period the existence of Napoleon was evidently drawing to a close his days were counted.  Whole hours, and even days, were either passed in gloomy silence or spent in pain, accompanied by distressing coughs, and all the melancholy signs of the approach of death.  He made a last effort to ride a few miles round Longwood on the 22d of January 1821, but it exhausted his strength, and from that time his only exercise was in the calash.  Even that slight motion soon became too fatiguing.

He now kept his room, and no longer stirred out.  His disorder and his weakness increased upon him.  He still was able to eat something, but very little, and with a worse appetite than ever.  “Ah! doctor,” he exclaimed, “how I suffer!  Why did the cannon-balls spare me only to die in this deplorable manner?  I that was so active, so alert, can now scarcely raise my eyelids!”

His last airing was on the 17th of March.  The disease increased, and Antommarchi, who was much alarmed, obtained with some difficulty permission to see an English physician.  He held a consultation, on the 26th of March, with Dr. Arnott of the 20th Regiment; but Napoleon still refused to take medicine, and often repeated his favourite saying:  “Everything that must happen is written down our hour is marked, and it is not in our power to take from time a portion which nature refuses us.”  He continued to grow worse, and at last consented to see Dr. Arnott, whose first visit was on the 1st of April He was introduced into the chamber of the patient, which was darkened, and into which Napoleon did not suffer any light to be brought, examined his pulse and the other symptoms, and was requested to repeat his visit the next day.  Napoleon was now within a month of his death, and although he occasionally spoke with the eloquence and vehemence he had so often exhibited, his mind was evidently giving way.  The reported appearance of a comet was taken as a token of his death.  He was excited, and exclaimed with emotion, “A comet! that was the precursor of the death of Caesar.”

On the 3d of April the symptoms of the disorder had become so alarming that Antommarchi informed Bertrand and Montholon he thought Napoleon’s danger imminent, and that Napoleon ought to take steps to put his affairs in order.  He was now attacked by fever and by violent thirst, which often interrupted his sleep in the night.  On the 14th Napoleon found himself in better spirits, and talked with Dr. Arnott on the merits of Marlborough, whose Campaigns he desired him to present to the 20th Regiment, learning that they did not, possess a copy in their library.