Under this torture even the gallant spirits of such men as Murat and Lannes could not sustain themselves:--they trod their cockades in the sand.

The common soldiers asked, with angry murmurs, if it was here the General designed to give them their seven acres?
He alone was superior to all these evils.

Such was the happy temperament of his frame, that--while others, after having rid them of their usual dress, were still suffused in perpetual floods of perspiration, and the hardiest found it necessary to give two or three hours in the middle of the day to sleep--Napoleon altered nothing; wore his uniform buttoned up as at Paris; never showed one bead of sweat on his brow; nor thought of repose except to lie down in his cloak the last at night, and start up the first in the morning.

It required, however, more than all his example of endurance and the general influence of Napoleon's character, could do to prevent the army from breaking into open mutiny.

"Once," said he at St.Helena, "I threw myself suddenly amidst a group of _generals_, and, addressing myself to the tallest of their number with vehemence, said, _You have been talking sedition: take care lest I fulfil my duty: your five feet ten inches would not hinder you from being shot within two hours._" For some days no enemy appeared; but at length scattered groups of horsemen began to hover on their flanks; and the soldier, who quitted the line but for a moment, was surrounded and put to death ere his comrades could rescue him.