Campaign of 1809, &C

12th.—The Emperor passed the morning in his bath, reading the Journals des Debats of March and April, received yesterday by way of the Cape. The Emperor was very much occupied with them; they produced a great degree of agitation in his system.

In general, since the Emperor had received books, and particularly the Moniteur, he continued much more at home; he scarcely ever went abroad; he no longer used a horse, nor even the calash; he hardly took the air for a few moments in the garden; he was not the better for it, his features and his health underwent a visible alteration.

I found him to-day reading Les Croisades by Michaud, which he left to run over Les Memoires de Bezenval. He stopped at the duel between the Comte d’Artois and the Duc de Bourbon. He found the details curious, but they seemed to be very remote from us. “It is difficult,” he observed, “to reconcile times so close to us with manners so different.”

In the course of this day’s conversations, the Emperor happened to repeat, what I have mentioned elsewhere, that his finest manœuvre had been at Eckmuhl, without, however, specifying it any further.