At St. Helena, when Napoleon had time to remember his early youth, he said to Montholon:

“What recollections of childhood crowd upon my memory. I am carried back to my first impressions of the life of man. It seems to me always, in these moments of calm, that I should have been the happiest man in the world with an income of twenty-five hundred dollars a year, living as the father of a family with my wife and son, in our old home at Ajaccio.… I still remember with emotion the minute details of a journey in which I accompanied Paoli. More than five hundred of us, young persons of the first families in the island, formed his body-guard. I felt proud of walking by his side, and he appeared to take pleasure in pointing out to me the passes of our mountains which had been witnesses of the heroic struggle of our countrymen for independence. The impressions made upon me still vibrate in my heart.… Religion is the dominion of the soul. It is the hope of life, the anchor of safety, the deliverance from evil. What a service has Christianity rendered to humanity! What a power would it still have did its ministers comprehend their mission!”

Napoleon’s hand-writing was of a most unintelligible character. “Do you write orthographically?” he asked his amanuensis one day at St. Helena. “A man occupied with public business can not attend to orthography. His ideas must flow faster than his hand can trace. He has only time to place his points. He must compress words into letters, and phrases into words, and let the scribes make it out afterward.”

“The rapid succession of your victories,” said Las Cases to Napoleon, “must have been a source of great delight to you.” “By no means,” Napoleon replied; “those who think so know nothing of the peril of our situation. The victory of to-day was instantly forgotten in preparation for the battle which was to be fought on the morrow. The aspect of danger was continually before me. I enjoyed not one moment of repose.”

“Tents,” said Napoleon, “are unhealthy; it is much better for the soldier to bivouac in the open air, for then he can build a fire and sleep with warm feet. Tents are necessary only for the general officers, who are obliged to read and consult their maps.”

“My extreme youth when I took command of the army of Italy,” Napoleon remarked, “made it necessary for me to evince great reserve of manner, and the utmost severity of morals. This was indispensable to enable me to sustain authority over men so greatly superior in age and experience. I pursued a line of conduct in the highest degree irreproachable and exemplary. In spotless morality I was a Cato, and must have appeared such to all. I was a philosopher and a sage. My supremacy could be retained only by proving myself a better man than any other in the army. Had I yielded to human weaknesses I should have lost my power.”

Napoleon sent the celebrated picture of St. Jerome from the Duke of Parma’s gallery to the Museum at Paris. The duke, to save his work of art, offered Napoleon two hundred thousand dollars, which the conqueror refused to take, saying: “The sum which he offers will be soon spent; but the possession of such a masterpiece at Paris will adorn that capital for ages, and give birth to similar exertions of genius.”

“Different matters are arranged in my head,” said Napoleon, “as in drawers. I open one drawer and close another as I wish. I have never been kept awake by an involuntary pre-occupation of the mind. If I desire repose I shut up all the drawers, and sleep. I have always slept when I wanted rest, and almost always at will.”

While at Milan, Napoleon had just mounted his horse one morning, when a dragoon, bearing important dispatches, presented himself before him. Napoleon gave a verbal answer and ordered the courier to take it back with all speed.

“I have no horse,” the man answered. “I rode mine so hard that it fell dead at your palace gates.”

Napoleon alighted. “Take mine,” he said.

The man hesitated.

“You think him too magnificently caparisoned and too fine an animal,” said Napoleon. “Nothing is too good for a French soldier.”

“Pavia,” said Napoleon, “is the only place I ever gave up to pillage. I promised that the soldiers should have it at their mercy for twenty-four hours; but after three hours I could bear such scenes of outrage no longer, and put an end to them. Policy and morality are equally opposed to the system. Nothing is so certain to disorganize and completely ruin an army.”

“I have,” said Napoleon, “a taste for founding, not for possessing. My riches consist in glory and celebrity. The Simplon and the Louvre were, in the eyes of the people and of foreigners, more my property than any private domains could possibly have been.”

To General Clark, on the death of his nephew, at Arcola, Napoleon wrote: “Your nephew, Elliott, has been slain upon the battlefield. That young man has several times marched at the head of our columns. He has died gloriously, and in the face of the enemy. He did not have a moment’s suffering. Where is the reasonable man who would not envy such a death? Where is he who, in the vicissitudes of life would not give himself up to leave in this manner a world so often ungrateful?”

Napoleon had no tendencies to gallantry. Madame de StÄel once said to him: “It is reported that you are not very partial to the ladies.” “I am very fond of my wife, Madame,” was the laconic reply.

“The English,” said Napoleon, “appear to prefer the bottle to the society of their ladies; as is exemplified by dismissing the ladies from the table and remaining for hours to drink and intoxicate themselves. If I were in England I should decidedly leave the table with the ladies. If the object is to talk instead of to drink, why banish them. Surely conversation is never so lively nor so witty as when ladies take a part in it. Were I an Englishwoman I should feel very discontented at being turned out by the men to wait for two or three hours while they were drinking. In France, society is nothing unless ladies are present. They are the life of conversation.”

A lady of rank once said to him, “What is life worth if one cannot be General Bonaparte?” Napoleon answered her wisely: “Madame! one may be a dutiful wife and the good mother of a family.”

Traveling through Switzerland, Napoleon was greeted with such enthusiasm that Bourrienne said to him, “It must be delightful to be greeted with such demonstrations of enthusiastic admiration.” “Bah,” replied Napoleon; “this same unthinking crowd under a slight change of circumstances would follow me just as eagerly to the scaffold.”

Speaking of the Theophilanthropists, Napoleon said, “They can accomplish nothing; they are merely actors.” “What!” was the reply; “do you thus stigmatize those whose tenets inculcate universal benevolence and the moral virtues?” “All moral systems are fine,” rejoined Napoleon. “The Gospel alone has shown a full and complete assemblage of the principles of morality, stripped of all absurdity. It is not made up, like your creed, of a few commonplace sentences put into bad verse. Do you wish to find out the really sublime? Repeat the Lord’s Prayer. Such enthusiasts are only to be met with the weapons of ridicule; all their efforts will prove ineffectual.”