From JC Herold, The Mind of Napoleon, 205-206:

'Napoleon told how, after one of the great battles of the Italian Campaign [of 1796-1797}, he and two or three others crossed the battlefield, which had not yet been cleared of corpses. 'We were alone, in the profound solitude of a beautiful moonlit night. Suddenly a dog leaped out from under the cloak of a corpse, came running toward us, and almost immediately afterward ran back to its shelter, howling piteously. He licked his master's face, ran back to us, and repeated this several time: he was seeking help and revenge at the same time. I don't know if it was the mood of the moment, or the place, or the time, or the action in itself, or what-at any rate, it's a fact than nothing I saw on any other battlefield ever produced a like impression on me. I stopped involuntarily to contemplate this spectacle. This man, I said to myself, has friends, perhaps. He may have some at the cam, in his company-and here he lies, abandoned by all except his dog. What a lesson nature was teaching us through an animal.'

'What a strange thing is man! How mysterious are the workings of his sensibility! I had commanded in battles that were to decide the fate of a whole army, and I had felt no emotion. I had watched the execution of maneuvers that were bound to cost the lives of many among us, and my eyes had remained dry. And suddenly I was shaken, turned inside out, by a dog howling in pain!''