On the 18th of July, three days after this ceremony, the Emperor set out from Saint-Cloud for the camp of Boulogne. Believing that his Majesty would be willing to dispense with my presence for a few days, and as it was a number of years since I had seen my family, I felt a natural desire to meet them again, and to review with my parents the singular circumstances through which I had passed since I had left them.
I should have experienced, I confess, great joy in talking with them of my present situation and my hopes; and I felt the need of freely expressing myself, and enjoying the confidences of domestic privacy, in compensation for the repression and constraint which my position imposed on me. Therefore I requested permission to pass eight days at Perueltz.
It was readily granted, and I lost no time in setting out; but my astonishment may be imagined when, the very day after my arrival, a courier brought me a letter from the Count de Remusat, ordering me to rejoin the Emperor immediately, adding that his Majesty needed me, and I
should have no other thought than that of returning without delay. In spite of the disappointment induced by such orders, I felt flattered nevertheless at having become so necessary to the great man who had deigned to admit me into his service, and at once bade adieu to my family. His Majesty had hardly reached Boulogne, when he set out again immediately on a tour of several days in the departments of the north.
I was at Boulogne before his return, and had organized his Majesty's service so that he found everything ready on his arrival; but this did not prevent his saying to me that I had been absent a long time.
While I am on this subject, I will narrate here, although some years in advance, one or two circumstances which will give the reader a better idea of the rigorous confinement to which I was subjected. I had contracted, in consequence of the fatigues of my continual journeyings in the suite of the Emperor, a disease of the bladder, from which I suffered horribly. For a long time I combated the disease with patience and dieting; but at last, the pain having become entirely unbearable, in 1808
I requested of his Majesty a month's leave of absence in order to be cured, Dr. Boyer having told me that a month was the shortest time absolutely necessary for my restoration, and that without it my disease would become incurable. I went to Saint-Cloud to visit my wife's family, where Yvan, surgeon of the Emperor, came to see me every day. Hardly a week had passed, when he told me that his Majesty thought I ought to be entirely well, and wished me to resume my duties. This wish was equivalent to an order; it was thus I understood it, and returned to the Emperor, who seeing me pale, and suffering excruciatingly, deigned to say to me many kind things, without, however, mentioning a new leave of absence. These two were my only absences for sixteen years; therefore, on my return from Moscow, and during the campaign of France, my disease having reached its height, I quitted the Emperor at Fontainebleau, because it was impossible for me, in spite of all my attachment to so kind a master, and all the gratitude which I felt towards him, to perform my duties longer. Even after this separation, which was exceedingly painful to me, a year hardly sufficed to cure me, and then not entirely.
But I shall take occasion farther on to speak of this melancholy event.
I now return to the recital of facts, which prove that I could, with more reason than many others, believe myself a person of great importance, since my humble services seemed to be indispensable to the master of Europe, and many frequenters of the Tuileries would have had more difficulty than I in proving their usefulness. Is there too much vanity in what I have just said? and would not the chamberlains have a right to be vexed by it? I am not concerned with that, so I continue my narrative. The Emperor was tenacious of old habits; he preferred, as we have already seen, being served by me in preference to all others;