If he was not inclined to talk, he reread the letters of the day before, or the pamphlets of the day, laughing at intervals with the hearty laugh of a great child.
Then suddenly, as one awakening from a dream, he would spring to his feet and cry out: "Write, Bourrienne!" Then he would sketch out the plan for some building to be erected, or dictate some one of those vast projects which have amazed--let us say rather, terrified the world.
At five o'clock he dined; after dinner the First Consul ascended to Josephine's apartments, where he usually received the visits of the ministers, and particularly that of the minister of foreign affairs, M.
de Talleyrand.

At midnight, sometimes earlier, but never later, he gave the signal for retiring by saying, brusquely: "Let us go to bed." The next day, at seven in the morning, the same life began over again, varied only by unforeseen incidents.
After these details of the personal habits of the great genius we are trying to depict under his first aspect, his personal portrait ought, we think, to come.
Bonaparte, First Consul, has left fewer indications of his personal appearance than Napoleon, Emperor.

Now, as nothing less resembles the Emperor of 1812 than the First Consul of 1800; let us endeavor, if possible, to sketch with a pen those features which the brush has never fully portrayed, that countenance which neither bronze nor marble has been able to render.

Most of the painters and sculptors who flourished during this illustrious period of art--Gros, David, Prud'hon, Girodet and Bosio--have endeavored to transmit to posterity the features of the Man of Destiny, at the different epochs when the vast providential vistas which beckoned him first revealed themselves.

Thus, we have portraits of Bonaparte, commander-in-chief, Bonaparte, First Consul, and Napoleon, Emperor; and although some painters and sculptors have caught more or less successfully the type of his face, it may be said that there does not exist, either of the general, the First Consul, or the emperor, a single portrait or bust which perfectly resembles him.
It was not within the power of even genius to triumph over an impossibility.