While his nerves were very irritable, his pulse was slow and regular. He declared that he had never felt his heart beat. Medicine he detested and would not take. When ill, he left off food, drank barley water, and took violent exercise. He could not bear the least tightness in his clothing. His garments were of the softest, finest material, and cut loose. His hats were padded, his boots lined with silk, and both hats and boots were “broken” for him before he wore them. His favorite trousers were white cassimere, and a habit he had of wiping his pen on his breeches made a new pair necessary every morning. His taking of snuff consisted merely in smelling it. He used tobacco in no other form. Extremely careful in business matters, he was disorderly in some personal details. In undressing he flung his clothes all about the room, and sometimes broke his watch in this way. Newspapers and books which he had been reading were scattered around in confusion. In shaving, he would never allow both sides of his face to be lathered at the same time: one cheek was finished before the other was touched. He had a habit of poking the fire with his foot, and burnt out many a pair of boots in so doing. Excessively fond of the hot water bath, he opened letters, read newspapers, and received callers while splashing around in the tub. On leaving the bath, his valet rubbed him down, using the flesh brush and coarse cloths, and then dressed him. The most self-helpful of men in matters of importance, he was one of the least so in this. He depended upon servants for almost everything connected with the care of his person. “Rub me hard! Scrub me as though I were an ass!” he would call to his valet, while he stood almost naked, and with a red bandanna handkerchief knotted about his head. He loved cologne-water and drenched himself with quantities of it. One of the privations he keenly felt at St. Helena was the lack of cologne. Other perfumes he detested, and Constant relates a curious incident of Napoleon calling to him one night to take out of his room a certain young lady who had been brought there, and who was “killing me with her perfume.” With his elevation to empire, Napoleon became more stately, reserved, dignified, and imposing; but perfect ease and repose of manner he never acquired. The indolent, calm, and studied air of languor and fatigue which, according to a well-known standard, constitutes good-breeding, he did not have. Perhaps he did not realize its tremendous value. Nervous, intense, electrical, pulsing with vital power, tossed by colossal ideas, ambitions, purposes, it was never possible for him to become a self-complacent formality, posing with studiously indolent grace, and uttering with laborious ease the dialect of polite platitude.