a little while? I
will stay by your bed with Constant." This tenderness was indeed
touching, especially in one occupying so elevated a rank.

My intimate service often gave me the opportunity of enjoying this
picture of domestic felicity. While I am on the subject of the Emperor's
ailments, I will say a few words concerning the most serious which he
endured, with the exception of that which caused his death.

At the siege of Toulon, in 1793, the Emperor being then only colonel of
artillery, a cannoneer was killed at his gun; and Colonel Bonaparte
picked up the rammer and rammed home the charge several times. The
unfortunate artilleryman had an itch of the most malignant kind, which
the Emperor caught, and of which he was cured only after many years; and
the doctors thought that his sallow complexion and extreme leanness,
which lasted so long a time, resulted from this disease being improperly
treated. At the Tuileries he took sulphur baths, and wore for some time
a blister plaster, having suffered thus long because, as he said, he had
not time to take care of himself. Corvisart warmly insisted on a
cautery; but the Emperor, who wished to preserve unimpaired the
shapeliness of his arm, would not agree to this remedy.

It was at this same siege that he was promoted from the rank of chief of
battalion to that of colonel in consequence of a brilliant affair with
the English, in which he received a bayonet wound in the left thigh, the
scar of which he often showed me. The wound in the foot which he
received at the battle of Ratisbonne left no trace; and yet, when the
Emperor received it, the whole army became alarmed.

We were about twelve hundred yards from Ratisbonne, when the Emperor,
seeing the Austrians fleeing on all sides, thought the combat was over.
His dinner had been brought in a hamper to a place which the Emperor had
designated; and as he was walking towards it, he turned to Marshal
Berthier, and exclaimed, "I am wounded!" The shock was so great that the
Emperor fell in a sitting posture, a bullet having, in fact, struck his
heel. From the size of this ball it was apparent that it had been fired
by a Tyrolean rifleman, whose weapon easily carried the distance we were
from the town. It can well be understood that such an event troubled and
frightened the whole staff.

An aide-de-camp summoned me; and when I arrived I found Dr. Yvan cutting
his Majesty's boot, and assisted him in dressing the wound. Although