othing in spite of fate: it is
immovable: there is no appeal from its decisions. The next person of our
family who will follow Elisa to the tomb is that great Napoleon who
hardly exists, who bends under the yoke, and who still, nevertheless
keeps Europe in alarm. Behold, my good friend, how I look on my
situation! As for me, all is over: I repeat it to you, my days will soon
close on this miserable rock."--"We returned," says Antommarchi, "into
his chamber. Napoleon lay down' in bed. 'Close my windows,' he said;
leave me to myself; I will send for you by-and-by. What a delightful
thing rest is! I would not exchange it for all the thrones in the world!
What an alteration! How I am fallen! I, whose activity was boundless,
whose mind never slumbered, am now plunged into a lethargic stupor, so
that it requires an effort even to raise my eyelids. I sometimes
dictated to four or five secretaries, who wrote as fast as words could be
uttered, but then I was NAPOLEON--now I am no longer anything. My
strength--my faculties forsake me. I do not live--I merely exist.'"

From this period the existence of Napoleon was evidently drawing to a
close his days were counted. Whole hours, and even days, were either
passed in gloomy silence or spent in pain, accompanied by distressing
coughs, and all the melancholy signs of the approach of death. He made a
last effort to ride a few miles round Longwood on the 22d of January
1821, but it exhausted his strength, and from that time his only exercise
was in the calash. Even that slight motion soon became too fatiguing.

He now kept his room, and no longer stirred out. His disorder and his
weakness increased upon him. He still was able to eat something, but
very little, and with a worse appetite than ever. "Ah! doctor," he
exclaimed, "how I suffer! Why did the cannon-balls spare me only to die
in this deplorable manner? I that was so active, so alert, can now
scarcely raise my eyelids!"

His last airing was on the 17th of March. The disease increased, and
Antommarchi, who was much alarmed, obtained with some difficulty
permission to see an English physician. He held a consultation, on the
26th of March, with Dr. Arnott of the 20th Regiment; but Napoleon still
refused to take medicine, and often repeated his favourite saying:
"Everything that must happen is written down our hour is marked, and it
is not in our power to take from time a portion which nature refuses us."
He continued to grow worse