Page:Napoleon (O'Connor 1896).djvu/98

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82
Napoleon.

weak look of Napoleon during the campaigns in Italy and Egypt."

Mr. Sherard, the editor and translator of these volumes, quotes appropriately here the statement from Stendhal that a lady who met Napoleon several times in April and May, 1795, spoke of him as "the thinnest and queerest being I ever met," and "so thin that he inspired pity."

VII.

NAPOLEON AT TABLE.

Méneval confirms what other writers have told us of the Spartan simplicity of Napoleon's method of daily life:

"He dined with Madame Bonaparte and with some persons of his family. On Wednesdays, which were the days of the Council, he kept the Consuls and the Ministers to dinner. He lunched alone, the simplest dishes being served, whilst for drink he contented himself with Chambertin diluted with water, and a single cup of coffee. All his time being occupied, he profited by the lunch hour to receive the people with whom he liked to converse. These were generally men of letters or artists."

As has already been seen, there were none of the elaborate precautions around the Palace of the Tuileries which in those stormy times one might have expected in the case of a great ruler. There