Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: The Emperor, on his side, had his secret agents, and Campbell could never feel certain that his own servant was not a spy. The information obtained was reported to the Emperor only. Poggi, the judge, was commissioned to explorer les families, and to report any gossip he might hear in the social life of the town.1 He had the gift of making people talk, and by his pleasant manners, with occasional carefully studied lapses of ill-humour, of giving precisely the opposite impression to what he really intended. He collected information while carrying on a constant deception. 1 Campbell, 143, 208 ; Pons de 1'H., 72, 81. THE LAST IDYLL Thus passed the first few months of the Imperial occupation of the island, as peaceful and quiet as life in the provinces, and untroubled by any serious event. The Emperor usually rose before dawn, sometimes as early as three o'clock, to enjoy the freshness of the air and to work and read in his study.1 He occupied himself by collecting a library. In passing through Frejus he bought 240 francs worth of books and a Bible compiled by Silvestre de Sacy in thirty-two volumes. At Lyons he bought a herbarium. Several cases of books from his library at Fontainebleau had arrived by the Guards' commissariat waggons, and others had been ordered from Venice, Genoa, Paris or Leghorn; those he kept were all rebound and stamped with an N or an eagle. The books sent for his approbation were often the fag-ends of libraries, odd volumes orworks without any interest, which he returned.1 Amongst these literary remains were some books which had been forbidden by the censor during his reign. These he read, and for the greater number could not discover the reason of the censure.2 However, during his palmy days it had been no easy matter to foresee what might displeas...