This brought on a conversation on the bulletins. The Emperor declared them to be very correct: assured us that, excepting what the proximity of the enemy compelled him to disguise, that when they came into their hands they might not derive any information prejudicial to him from them, all the remainder was very exact. At Vienna and throughout Germany they did them more justice than among us. If they had acquired a bad character in our armies—if it was a common saying, _as false as a bulletin_, it was personal rivalships, party spirit, that had established it: it was the wounded self-love of those who were not mentioned in them, and who had, or fancied they had, a right to a place there: and still more than all, our ridiculous national defect of having no greater enemies to our successes and our glory than ourselves.
The Emperor after dinner played some games at chess. The day had been very rainy: he was unwell and retired early.
26th. The weather was still bad; it was impossible to set foot out of doors. The rain and the damp invaded our pasteboard apartments. Every one of us suffered in his health in consequence. The temperature here is certainly mild, but the climate is among the most unwholesome. It is a thing ascertained in the island, that few there attain the age of fifty; hardly any that of sixty. Add to this, exclusion from the rest of the world, physical privations, bad moral treatment, and it will result that prisons in Europe are far preferable to liberty in St. Helena.
About four o’clock several Captains from China were brought to me, who were to be presented to the Emperor. They had an opportunity of seeing the smallness, the dampness, and bad state of my habitation. They enquired how the Emperor found himself in point of health. It declined visibly, I told them. Never did we hear a complaint from him: his great soul suffered nothing to overcome it, and even contributed to deceive him with respect to his own state: but we could see him decay very perceptibly. I led them shortly after to the Emperor who was walking in the garden. He seemed to me at that moment more disordered than usual. He dismissed them in half an hour. He went in again, and took a bath.