European affairs, it might be thought, would have been sufficiently exhausting to preclude colonial projects. But, to use an apparent paradox, Napoleon never had more time to spare than when he was most busy. He derived his recreation from change of work, shutting up one drawer in his mind to open another, to use his own simile. Of leisure and ease he had little; a visit to the theatre, a hunt occasionally, an hour’s chat with Josephine and the ladies of the Consular Court, during which he would tell them the most creepy ghost stories, and a game of cards at which he cheated, sufficed him for pastime. He took exercise while working, restlessly pacing the study while he dictated a torrent of words on civil, military, and naval matters, or walking in the garden discussing affairs with a Minister of State. At this period Napoleon’s intellect and powers of exhaustive concentration were at their best, and it is characteristic of his marvellous energy that he could find time to devote to the possessions of the Republic overseas. He resolved upon an attempt to recover San Domingo, in the West Indies, then ruled by the famous negro President Toussaint L’Ouverture, the subject of one of Wordsworth’s greatest sonnets: “Toussaint, thou most unhappy man of men.” France had practically lost her supremacy of this important West India island owing to a revolt of the negroes, and there seemed a likelihood of Toussaint declaring its independence. The First Consul sent off 21,000 troops under General Leclerc, who had married Pauline, the prettiest of the Bonaparte sisters, and the blacks were eventually routed. Some months later, when the yellow fever had laid low many of the French soldiers and England and the Republic were again at war, the cause of the negroes was taken up by the British, with the result that the independence of San Domingo was definitely established. Only one-fifth of the expeditionary army returned to France. In a diary kept by Rear-Admiral Sir George Cockburn’s secretary during Napoleon’s voyage in the _Northumberland_ to St Helena, a conversation is recorded in which the ex-Emperor referred particularly to the West Indies. He said that “had he continued at the head of the French Government, he never would have attempted the re-occupation of St Domingo; that the most he would have established with regard to that island would have been to keep frigates and sloops stationed around it to force the blacks to receive everything they wanted from, and to export all their produce exclusively to, France; for, he added, he considered the independence of the blacks there to be more likely to prove detrimental to England than to France. This latter remark is a reiteration of his feelings with respect to England, as in all the calculations he makes, the proportion of evil which may accrue to our nation seems to bear in his mind the first consideration.”