them, and with as low
a bow as the little King of Rome, said "Messieurs les Gardes d'Honneur,
Je vous salue." ...

LETTER VII.

_Monday, July 19th._

...The history of Buonaparte immediately preceding, and subsequent to
the surrender of Paris, was never actually known--I will give it you.

The capitulation took place on the 30th (March). In the evening of that
day he arrived at Fontainebleau without his army. Rumours of fighting
near Paris had reached him. He almost immediately set off with Berthier
in his carriage for Paris, and actually arrived at Villejuif, only 6
miles from the capital; when he heard the result he turned about and
appeared again at Fontainebleau at 9 the next morning. When he alighted,
the person who handed him out, a sort of head-porter of the Palace, who
was our guide, told me he looked "triste, bien triste"; he spoke to
nobody, went upstairs as fast as he could, and then called for his plans
and maps; his occupation during the whole time he staid consisted in
writing and looking over papers, but to what this writing and these
papers related the world may feel but will never know; his spirits were
by no means broken down; in a day or two he was pretty much as usual,
and it is said he signed the Abdication without the least apparent
emotion. We heard he was mad, but I can assure you from undoubted
authority that he was perfectly well in mind and body the whole time,
and, notwithstanding his excessive fatigues, as corpulent as ever;
indeed, said our guide, "War seems to agree with him better than with
any man I ever knew." Buonaparte laid out immense sums in furnishing and
beautifying the Palais here. I got into his library, the snuggest room
you ever saw, immediately below a little study in which he always sat
and settled his affairs; his arm-chair was a very comfortable, honest,
plain arm-chair, but I looked in vain for all the gashes and notches
which it was said he was wont to inflict upon it. I could not perceive
a scratch, he was too busily employed in that said chair in forming
plans for cutting up Europe; within three yards of his table was a
little door, or rather trap door, by which you descended down the oddest
spiral staircase you ever beheld into the Library, which was low and
small; the books were few of them new, almost all standard works upon
history--at least I am sure 4 out of 5 were historical--all of his own
selection, and each stamped, as in fact was everything else from