Page:Napoleon (O'Connor 1896).djvu/43

Rh the least degree the result of accident. Here is a description of himself which will bring this out:

I am always at work. I meditate a great deal. If I seem always equal to the occasion, ready to face what comes, it is because I have thought the matter over a long time before undertaking it. I have anticipated whatever might happen. It is no genius which suddenly reveals to me what I ought to do or say in any unlooked-for circumstance, but my own reflection, my own meditation. . . . I work all the time, at dinner, in the theatre. I wake up at night in order to resume my work. I got up last night at two o'clock. I stretched myself on my couch before the fire to examine the army reports sent to me by the Minister of War; I found twenty mistakes in them, and made notes which I have this morning sent to the Minister, who is now engaged with his clerks in rectifying them.

He wears out all his Ministers by this incessant power of work. When Consul, "he sometimes presides at special meetings of the Section of the Interior from ten o'clock in the evening until five o'clock in the morning." Often, at St. Cloud, he keeps the Councillors of State from nine o'clock in the morning until five in the evening, with fifteen minutes' intermission, and seems no more fatigued at the close of the sitting than when it began.