[Footnote 28: It is well known that there was not a single individual of note in the service, either of his allies or of his enemies, whose strong and weak points were not perfectly understood by Napoleon.]
Napoleon now employed himself again in reading the public journals of France and of foreign countries; he read assiduously all periodical works of a political tendency; he studied these productions; he investigated them with acuteness, and he could well divine the meaning of a writer who was compelled to be silent, and conjecture the nature of intelligence which an editor was forced to suppress.
Strangers of distinction, and particularly the English, were received by Napoleon with affability and kindness, and he used to talk freely with his visitors on public affairs. He knew how to draw them out, and to lead them to expatiate on points which he wished to penetrate; and he seldom failed to obtain much useful information from those interviews. By these simple methods Napoleon obtained a correct idea of the events which were taking place on the continent; he was too well acquainted with revolutions not to be sensible that the sway of events would open the gates of France, and admit him; and he was too wary to enter into a private correspondence with his partisans, when any accident might have revealed his secret wishes, and have afforded a pretext to his enemies for attacking his independence and his liberty.
Napoleon thus waited in silence till the fated time of his re-appearance in France should arrive, when a French Officer[29], disguised as a sailor, disembarked at Porto Ferrajo.
[Footnote 29: This officer is the person who is named in the declaration made on the 15th of March to the prince of Essling, then governor of the 8th military division, by Monsieur P*****, who landed with Napoleon from the Isle of Elba, and was arrested at Toulon by order of the prefect of the department of the Var.]
Some few days before this Officer set out to join the army in the year 1815, he gave over to me the manuscript narrative of his voyage to the Isle of Elba. "To you," added he, "I deliver my history, which is also that of the revolution of the 20th of March. As the Emperor, when regaining his throne, did not think fit to speak of me, I was therefore bound to be silent; but I am as eager to live in the memory of after-ages as he can possibly be[30]. It is my wish that posterity may learn, that I too shared in the glorious enterprise of subverting the Bourbon government, and of bringing back the Emperor. My mind misgives me. I have a presentiment that I shall die in this campaign. Keep my manuscript, and promise to publish it when the time shall arrive." I gave my word accordingly; and the forebodings of my friend were realised, for he was killed at Waterloo.