Bourrienne, de Meneval, and Maret invent a stenography of their own, for he never repeats any of his phrases; so much the worse for the pen if it lags behind, and so much the better if a volley of exclamations or of oaths gives it a chance to catch up .-- Never did speech flow and overflow in such torrents, often without either discretion or prudence, even when the outburst is neither useful nor creditable the reason is that both spirit and intellect are charged to excess subject to this inward pressure the improvisator and polemic, under full headway,[1212] take the place of the man of business and the statesman.
"With him," says a good observer,[1213] "talking is a prime necessity, and, assuredly, among the prerogatives of high rank, he ranks first that of speaking without interruption." Even at the Council of State he allows himself to run on, forgetting the business on hand; he starts off right and left with some digression or demonstration, some invective or other, for two or three hours at a stretch,[1214] insisting over and over again, bent on convincing or prevailing, and ending in demanding of the others if he is not right, "and, in this case, never failing to find that all have yielded to the force of his arguments." On reflection, he knows the value of an assent thus obtained, and, pointing to his chair, he observes: "It must be admitted that it is easy to be brilliant when one is in that seat!" Nevertheless he has enjoyed his intellectual exercise and given way to his passion, which controls him far more than he controls it.
"My nerves are very irritable," he said of himself, "and when in this state were my pulse not always regular I should risk going crazy."[1215] The tension of accumulated impressions is often too great, and it ends in a physical break-down.

Strangely enough in so great a warrior and with such a statesman, "it is not infrequent, when excited, to see him shed tears." He who has looked upon thousands of dying men, and who has had thousands of men slaughtered, "sobs," after Wagram and after Bautzen,[1216] at the couch of a dying comrade.

"I saw him," says his valet, "weep while eating his breakfast, after coming from Marshal Lannes's bedside; big tears rolled down his cheeks and fell on his plate." It is not alone the physical sensation, the sight of a bleeding, mangled body, which thus moves him acutely and deeply; for a word, a simple idea, stings and penetrates almost as far.

Before the emotion of Dandolo, who pleads for Venice his country, which is sold to Austria, he is agitated and his eyes moisten.[1217] Speaking of the capitulation of Baylen, at a full meeting of the Council of State,[1218] his voice trembles, and "he gives way to his grief, his eyes even filling with tears." In 1806, setting out for the army and on taking leave of Josephine, he has a nervous attack which is so severe as to bring on vomiting.[1219] "We had to make him sit down," says an eye-witness, "and swallow some orange water; he shed tears, and this lasted a quarter of an hour." The same nervous and stomachic crisis came on in 1808, on deciding on the divorce; he tosses about a whole night, and laments like a woman; he melts, and embraces Josephine; he is weaker than she is: "My poor Josephine, I can never leave you!" Folding her in his arms, he declares that she shall not quit him; he abandons himself wholly to the sensation of the moment; she must undress at once, sleep alongside of him, and he weeps over her; "literally," she says, "he soaked the bed with his tears."-- Evidently, in such an organism, however powerful the superimposed regulator, there is a risk of the equilibrium being destroyed.

He is aware of this, for he knows himself well; he is afraid of his own nervous sensibility, the same as of an easily frightened horse; at critical moments, at Berezina, he refuses to receive the bad news which might excite this, and, on the informer's insisting on it, he asks him again,[1220] "Why, sir, do you want to disturb me ?"--Nevertheless, in spite of his precautions, he is twice taken unawares, at times when the peril was alarming and of a new kind; he, so clear headed and so cool under fire, the boldest of military heroes and the most audacious of political adventurers, quails twice in a parliamentary storm and again in a popular crisis.