Supreme in war, Napoleon was also one of the greatest administrators of whom we have record. As the story of his life has progressed we have noted how he set about the reformation of the governments of the various countries he had conquered or where his word was regarded as law. “The State--it is I,” said Louis XIV., and Napoleon summed up his own mode of life on one occasion by quoting the remark, which was no mere figure of speech. He seldom took recreation; when he was tired of thinking of battalions he thought of fleets, or colonies, or commerce. As Emperor he sometimes hunted, but more from a matter of policy than because he loved sport, just as he went to Mass to set a good example, and to the first act of a new play to gratify public curiosity. M. Frédéric Masson, the eminent Napoleonic historian, is authority for the statement that the Emperor once promised to attend a magnificent ball, and the most elaborate preparations had been made in his honour. Unfortunately the Imperial guest remained closeted with the Minister of Finance from eight o’clock in the evening until he heard a clock strike and was surprised to find that it was 3 A.M. The so-called pleasures of the table were miseries to him, and he ate his food with no regard whatever for convention or the menu. He would begin with an ice and finish with a viand. The “Memoirs” of Napoleon’s three private secretaries, Bourrienne, Méneval, and Fain, afford us intimate views of the great man at work. Those of Bourrienne are the least authentic because they are not entirely his writing. The Emperor had an unfortunate habit from his secretary’s point of view of dictating his correspondence in full, and he spoke at such a rate that it was almost impossible to note what he said in its entirety. To interrupt him was a breach of etiquette. Fain found it necessary to leave blanks, which he filled up when he was transcribing with the help of the context. M. Masson thus describes the Emperor’s work-room at the Tuileries:--