"If we sometimes play the fool, Reason should resume her rule."]
The Emperor entered his closet habitually before six in the morning, and seldom quitted it till night.
Impatience and vivacity are almost always incompatible with order and precision. Napoleon, destined to be like no other person, added to the fire of genius the methodical habits of cold and little minds. For the most part, he took care to arrange his numerous papers himself. Each of them had its settled place. Here was found whatever related to the war department: there, the budgets, the daily statements of the treasury and finances: farther on, the reports of the police, his secret correspondence with his private agents, &c. He carefully returned every thing to its place, after having used it: compared with him the most methodical clerk would have been but a bungler.
His first business was to read his correspondence, and the despatches that had arrived in the night. He put aside the interesting letters, and threw the rest on the floor: this he called his _answered_.
He afterwards examined the copies of letters opened at the post office, and burnt them immediately. It seemed, as if he wished to annihilate all traces of the abuse of power, of which he had been guilty.
He finished by casting an eye over the newspapers. Sometimes he said, "That's a good article; whose is it?" He must know every thing.
These several readings ended, he set to work; and it may be said without exaggeration, that he was then as extraordinary, as incomparable, as at the head of his armies.
As he would entrust to nobody the supreme care of the government, he saw every thing himself; and it is easy to conceive, on what a multiplicity of objects he had to fix his eyes. Independently of his ministers, the Duke of Bassano, the commandant of the first division of Paris, the prefect of the police, the inspector general of the gendarmerie, the major-general of guards, the grand marshal of the palace, the great officers of the crown, the aides-de-camp, and the orderly officers (_officiers d'ordonnance_) on missions, daily sent him circumstantial reports, which he examined, and answered immediately: it being a maxim with him, to put nothing off till to-morrow. And let it not be supposed, that he satisfied himself with a superficial judgment of affairs: he read every report through, and examined every voucher attentively. Frequently the super-human sagacity, with which he was gifted, enabled him to perceive errors and imperfections, that had escaped the scrutinizing eyes of his ministers; and then he corrected their labours. But still more frequently he fashioned them anew from beginning to end; and what was a fortnight's work to a whole ministry, scarcely cost the genius of Napoleon a few minutes.