my
place? I replied that when I had resolved to consecrate my whole life to
the service of the unfortunate Emperor, it was not from views of vile
interest; but I was in despair at the thought that he should have made me
appear before Count Bertrand as an impostor and a dishonest man. Ah!
how happy would it then have been for me had the Emperor never thought of
giving me those accursed one hundred thousand francs! These ideas
tortured me. Ah! if I could only have taken twenty-four hours for
reflection, however just might have been my resentment, how gladly would
I have sacrificed it! I would have thought of the Emperor alone, and
would have followed him; but a sad and inexplicable fatality had not
decreed this.

This took place on the 19th of April, the most miserable day of my life.
What an evening, what a night I passed! What was my grief on learning
the next day that the Emperor had departed at noon, after making his
adieux to his guard! When I awoke that morning, all my resentment had
been appeased in thinking of the Emperor. Twenty times I wished to
return to the palace; twenty times after his departure I wished to take
post horses and overtake him; but I was deterred by the offer he had made
me through M. Hubert. "Perhaps," I thought, "he will think it is the
money which influences me; this will, doubtless, be said by those around
him; and what an opinion he will have of me!" In this cruel perplexity I
did not dare to decide. I suffered all that it is possible for a man to
suffer; and, at times, that which was only too true seemed like a dream
to me, so impossible did it seem that I could be where the Emperor was
not. Everything in this terrible situation contributed to aggravate my
distress. I knew the Emperor well enough to be aware that even had I
returned to him then, he would never have forgotten that I had wished to
leave him; I felt that I had not the strength to bear this reproach from
his lips. On the other side, the physical suffering caused by my disease
had greatly increased, and I was compelled to remain in bed a long while.
I could, indeed, have triumphed over these physical sufferings however
cruel they might have been, but in the frightful complications of my
position I was reduced to a condition of idiocy; I saw nothing of what
was around me; I heard nothing of what was said; and after this statement
the reader will surely not expect that I shall have anything to say about
the farewell of the Emper