“Ah, I am afraid you have had a bad night of it,” said the emperor, kindly.
“Sire, your majesty has again been awake all the night long, and—”
“And consequently,” said Napoleon, interrupting him—“consequently you have been awake, too. Well, console yourself; we shall soon have more quiet nights; console yourself, and do not report me to the Empress Josephine when we have returned to Paris. My dear Josephine hates nothing so much as sleepless nights.”
“Sire, the empress is right; she ought to hate them,” said Constant, respectfully. “Your majesty, taking no rest whatever in the daytime, needs repose at least in the night. Your majesty sleeps too little.”
“By doing so I am better off than the sluggards, inasmuch as my life does not only consist of days, but also of nights,” replied Napoleon, good-humoredly. “I shall have lived eighty years then in the space of forty. But be quiet, Constant, I will now comply with your wishes and sleep.”
Constant hastened to open the door leading to the bedroom.
“Oh, no,” said the emperor, “if I say I will sleep, I do not mean that I will go to bed. Beds are, on the whole, only good for old women and gouty old men. When I was second lieutenant, I once made the experiment not to go to bed for six months, but to sleep on the floor or on a chair, and it agreed very well with me. Give me the handkerchief for my head, and my coat, Constant.”
Constant hurried with a sigh to the bedroom in order to fetch the articles Napoleon had ordered; and while he was wrapping the silken handkerchief around the emperor’s head, and assisted him in putting on his gray, well-lined, and comfortable cloth-coat instead of the uniform, the emperor softly whistled and hummed an air.
He then snugly stretched himself in his arm-chair, and kindly nodding to Constant, he said: “As soon as General Savary has returned, let him come in.”
Constant softly glided into the anteroom. He met there some of his acquaintances.