d the effects of a strange climate,
accelerated his death, which took place a few months after his arrival in
France. The reports which spread concerning his death, the assertion
that it was not a natural one, and that it had been caused by poison,
obtained no credit. I should add that Toussaint wrote a letter to
Bonaparte; but I never saw in it the expression attributed to him, "The
first man of the blacks to the first man of the whites" Bonaparte
acknowledged that the black leader possessed energy, courage, and great
skill. I am sure that he would have rejoiced if the result of his
relations with St. Domingo had been something else than the kidnaping and
transportation of Toussaint.

Leclerc, after fruitless efforts to conquer the colony, was himself
carried off by the yellow fever. Rochambeau succeeded him by right of
seniority, and was as unsuccessful as Menou had been in Egypt. The
submission of the blacks, which could only have been obtained by
conciliation, he endeavoured to compel by violence. At last, in December
1803, he surrendered to an English squadron, and abandoned the island to
Dessalines.

Bonaparte often experienced severe bodily pain, and I have now little
doubt, from the nature of his sufferings, that they were occasioned by
the commencement of that malady which terminated his life at St. Helena.
These pains, of which he frequently complained, affected him most acutely
on the night when he dictated to me the instructions for General Leclerc.
It was very late when I conducted him to his apartment. We had just been
taking a cup of chocolate, a beverage of which we always partook when our
business lasted longer than one o'clock in the morning. He never took a
light with him when he went up to his bedroom. I gave him my arm, and we
had scarcely got beyond the little staircase which leads to the corridor,
when he was rudely run against by a man who was endeavouring to escape as
quickly as possible by the staircase. The First Consul did not fall
because I supported him. We soon gained his chamber, where we, found
Josephine, who, having heard the noise, awoke greatly alarmed. From the
investigations which were immediately made it appeared that the uproar
was occasioned by a fellow who had been keeping an assignation and had
exceeded the usual hour for his departure.

On the 7th of January 1802 Mademoiselle Hortense was married to Louis
Bonaparte. As the custom was not yet resumed of adding the religious