tate of inactivity never known before, and
sometimes reposes in his bedroom of late for several hours in the day;
takes exercise in a carriage and not on horseback. His health
excellent and his spirits not at all depressed" ("F.O.," France, No.
114). During his ten months at Elba he became very stout and his
cheeks puffy.

On his return to France he displayed his old activity; and the most
credible witnesses assert that his faculties showed no marked decline.
Guizot, who saw a good deal of him, writes: "I perceive in the
intellect and conduct of Napoleon during the Hundred Days no sign of
enfeebling: I find in his judgment and actions his accustomed
qualities." In a passage quoted above (p. 449) Mollien notes that his
master was a prey to lassitude after some hours of work, but he says
nothing on the subject of disease; and in a man of forty-six, who had
lived a hard life and a "fast" life, we should not expect to find the
capacity for the sustained intellectual efforts of the Consulate.
Meneval noticed nothing worse in his master's condition than a
tendency to "reverie": he detected no disease. The statement of
Pasquier that his genius and his physical powers were in a profound
decline is a manifest exaggeration, uttered by a man who did not once
see him before Waterloo, who was driven from Paris by him, and strove
to discourage his supporters. Still less can we accept the following
melodramatic description, by Thiebault, of Napoleon's appearance on
Sunday, June 11th: "His look, once so formidable and piercing, had
lost its strength and even its steadiness: his face had lost all
expression and all its force: his mouth, compressed, had none of its
former witchery: and his gait was as perplexed as his demeanour and
gestures were undecided: the ordinary pallor of his skin was replaced
by a strongly pronounced greenish tinge which struck me."

Let us follow this wreck of a man to the war and see what he
accomplished. At dawn on June 12th he entered his landau and drove to
Laon, a distance of some seventy miles. On the next day he got through
an immense amount of work, and proceeded to Beaumont. On the 15th of
June he was up at dawn, mounted his horse, and remained on horseback,
directing the operations against the Prussians, for nearly eighteen
hours. This time was broken by one spell of rest. Near Charleroi, says
Baudus, an officer of Soult's staff, he was overcome by sleep and
heeded not the cheers of a passing column: