would be willing to dispense with my presence for a few days, and as it
was a number of years since I had seen my family, I felt a natural desire
to meet them again, and to review with my parents the singular
circumstances through which I had passed since I had left them.

I should have experienced, I confess, great joy in talking with them of
my present situation and my hopes; and I felt the need of freely
expressing myself, and enjoying the confidences of domestic privacy, in
compensation for the repression and constraint which my position imposed
on me. Therefore I requested permission to pass eight days at Perueltz.
It was readily granted, and I lost no time in setting out; but my
astonishment may be imagined when, the very day after my arrival, a
courier brought me a letter from the Count de Remusat, ordering me to
rejoin the Emperor immediately, adding that his Majesty needed me, and I
should have no other thought than that of returning without delay. In
spite of the disappointment induced by such orders, I felt flattered
nevertheless at having become so necessary to the great man who had
deigned to admit me into his service, and at once bade adieu to my
family. His Majesty had hardly reached Boulogne, when he set out again
immediately on a tour of several days in the departments of the north.
I was at Boulogne before his return, and had organized his Majesty's
service so that he found everything ready on his arrival; but this did
not prevent his saying to me that I had been absent a long time.

While I am on this subject, I will narrate here, although some years in
advance, one or two circumstances which will give the reader a better
idea of the rigorous confinement to which I was subjected. I had
contracted, in consequence of the fatigues of my continual journeyings in
the suite of the Emperor, a disease of the bladder, from which I suffered
horribly. For a long time I combated the disease with patience and