For nine days before he died he lay unconscious and babbled in delirium. On the morning of May 5, 1821, Montholon thought he heard the words “_France ... armée ... tête d’armée._” The dying Emperor thrust Montholon from his side, struggled out of bed, and staggered towards the window. Montholon overpowered him and put him back to bed, where he lay silent and motionless till he died the same evening. The man who had fought about sixty pitched battles, all of which he had won, I believe, but two--who had caused the deaths of three millions of his own men and untold millions of his enemies--died as peacefully in his bed as any humble labourer. What dim memories passed through his clouded brain as he tried to say “head of the army”? A great tropical storm was threatening Longwood. Did he recall the famous “sun of Austerlitz” beneath whose rays the _grande armée_ had elevated its idolized head to the highest pitch of earthly glory? Who can follow the queer paths taken by associated ideas in the human brain? Benvenuto Cellini No one can read Benvenuto’s extraordinary autobiography without being reminded of the even more extraordinary diary of Mr. Pepys. But there is one very great difference. Cellini dictated his memoirs to a little boy for the world at large, and did not profess to tell the whole truth--rather those things which came into his mind readily in his old age; but Pepys wrote for himself in secret cypher in his own study, and the reason of his writing has never yet been guessed. Why did he set down all his most private affairs? And when they became too disgraceful even for Mr. Pepys’s conscience, why did he set them down in a mongrel mixture of French and Spanish? Can we find a hint in the fact that he left a key to the cypher behind him? Did he really wish his Diary to remain unreadable for ever? Was it really a quaint and beastly vanity that moved him?