During the terrible retreat through Russia, Beyle was superintendent of the depots at Minsk, Vitebsk, and Mohilof; he did good service by supplying the army as it passed Orcha with provisions for three days, the only provisions served out to it between Moscow and Beresina. The coolness and determination which had characterised him from his childhood did not desert him now. It has been often told how, on one of the most calamitous days of the campaign, he made his appearance in Daru's quarters cleanly shaved and carefully dressed, and was greeted by his chief with the words: "You are a brave man, Monsieur Beyle; you have shaved to-day." During the retreat he lost everything--horses, carriages, clothes, and money--even the sum with which he was provided for emergencies. Before he left, his sister had replaced all the buttons on one of his overcoats with pieces of twenty and forty francs, carefully covered with cloth. On his return she asked him if they had been useful to him. After much reflection, he remembered that somewhere in the neighbourhood of Wilna he had presented his coat to a waiter, considering it worn out. The incident is a characteristic one; for Beyle, who was quite as eager to excel in diplomacy as in literature, was extremely prudent, but at the same time extremely forgetful. He re-entered on his official duties in Paris; in 1813, he was, as a member of the Emperor's staff, at Mainz, Erfurt, Lützen, and Dresden; and for a time he held the appointment of Commissary-General in Silesia. His health giving way, he went to recruit it by the Lake of Como, in the region to which he always returned as to an earthly Paradise, and where, as usual, he passed in blissful idleness such leisure as the pursuit of a happy love affair left him. He was once more actively employed under Napoleon in 1814; but the Emperor's fall blasted all his hopes of a successful official career. He lost everything--his appointment, his income, his position in society; and he bore the loss not merely without complaint, but with cheerfulness, resigning himself with philosophic equanimity to being henceforward simply the cosmopolitan, dilettante, and author.