OUR DAILY HABITS.—CONVERSATION WITH GOVERNOR WILKS.—ARMIES.—CHEMISTRY.—POLITICS.—REMARKS ON INDIA.—DELPHINE, BY MAD. DE STAËL.—NECKER, CALONNE.
18th—20th. We led a life of great uniformity. The Emperor did not go out in the mornings. The English lesson was very regularly taken about two o’clock; then followed either a walk in the garden, or some presentations, which, however, were very rare; afterwards a little excursion in the calash, as the horses were at last arrived. Before dinner we proceeded with the revision of the Campaigns of Italy or Egypt: after dinner we read romances.
On the 20th, the Emperor received Governor Wilks, with whom he had a profound discussion on the army, the sciences, government, and the Indies. Speaking of the organization of the English army, he dwelt much on the principles of promotion in it; expressing his surprise that, in a country in which equality of rights is maintained, the soldiers so seldom become officers.
Colonel Wilks admitted that the English soldiers were not formed to become officers; and said that the English were equally astonished at the great difference they had remarked in the French army, where almost every soldier shewed the nascent talents of an officer. “That,” observed the Emperor, “is one of the great results of the Conscription; it has rendered the French army the best constituted that ever existed. It is an institution,” he continued, “eminently national, and already strongly interwoven with our habits; it had ceased to be a cause of grief, except to mothers; and the time was at hand, when a girl would not have listened to a young man who had not acquitted himself of this debt to his country. And it would have been only when arrived at this point,” added he, “that the Conscription would have manifested the full extent of its advantages. When the service no longer bears the appearance of punishment or compulsory duty, but is become a point of honour, on which all are jealous, then only is the nation great, glorious and powerful; it is then that its existence is proof against reverses, invasions—even the hand of time!
“Besides,” continued he, “it may be truly said that there is nothing that may not be obtained from Frenchmen by the excitement of danger; it seems to animate them; it is an inheritance which they derive from their Gallic forefathers.... Courage, the love of glory, are, with the French, an instinct, a kind of sixth sense. How often in the heat of battle has my attention been fixed on my young conscripts, rushing, for the first time, into the thickest of the fight: honour and valour bursting forth at every pore.”
After this, the Emperor, knowing that Governor Wilks was well informed in chemistry, attacked him on that subject. He spoke of the immense progress in all our manufactures occasioned by this science. He said, that both England and France, undoubtedly, possessed great chemists; but that chemistry was more generally diffused in France, and more particularly directed to useful results; that in England it remained a science, while in France it was becoming entirely practical. The Governor admitted that these observations were perfectly correct, and, with a liberality of sentiment, added that it was to him, the Emperor, that all these advantages were owing, and that, wherever science was led by the hand of power, it would produce great and happy effects upon the well-being of society. The Emperor observed that of late France had obtained sugar from the beet-root, as good and cheap as that extracted from the sugar-cane. The Governor was astonished; he had not even suspected it. The Emperor assured him that it was an established fact, opposed, as it was, to the rooted prejudices of all Europe, France itself not excepted. He added that it was the same with woad, the substitute for indigo, and with almost all the colonial produce except the dye-woods. This led him to conclude that if the invention of the compass had produced a revolution in commerce, the progress of chemistry bade fair to produce a counter-revolution.
The conversation then turned on the present numerous emigrations of the artisans of France and England to America. The Emperor observed that this favoured country grew rich by our follies. The Governor smiled, and replied, that those of England would occupy the first place in the list, from the numerous errors of administration, which had led to the revolt and subsequent emancipation of the Colonies. The Emperor said that their emancipation was inevitable; that when children had attained the size of their fathers, it was difficult to retain them long in a state of obedience.
They then spoke of India; the Governor had resided there many years, and had filled high situations; he had made important researches; he was able to reply to a multitude of questions proposed to him by the Emperor, respecting the laws, the manners, the usages of the Hindoos, the administration of the English, the nature and construction of the existing laws, &c.
The English are governed according to the laws of England; the natives by local acts made by the several Councils in the service of the Company, with whom it is a fundamental principle to render them as nearly similar as possible to the laws of the people themselves.
Hyder Aly was a man of genius; Tippoo, his son, was arrogant, ignorant, and rash. The former had upwards of 100,000 men; the latter scarcely ever more than 50,000. These people are not deficient in courage, but they do not possess our physical strength, and have neither discipline nor any knowledge of tactics. Seventeen thousand men in the English service, of whom only 4000 were Europeans, were sufficient to destroy the empire of Mysore. It was, however, to be presumed that, sooner or later, the national spirit would rescue these regions from the dominion of the Europeans. The intermixture of European blood with that of the natives, was producing a mixed race, whose numbers and disposition certainly prepared the way for a great revolution. Nevertheless, in their actual condition, the people were happier than they had been previously to the dominion of the English: an impartial administration of justice, and the mildness of the government were, for the present, the strongest supports of the power of the parent state. It was also considered expedient to prohibit the English and other Europeans from buying lands there, or forming hereditary establishments, &c.
Madame de Staël’s Delphine was at this time a subject of conversation at our evening parties. The Emperor analyzed it: few things in it escaped his censure. The irregularity of mind and imagination which pervades it excited his criticism: there were throughout, said he, the same faults which had formerly made him keep the authoress at a distance, notwithstanding the most pointed advances and the most unremitting flattery on her part. No sooner had victory immortalized the young General of the Army of Italy, than Madame de Staël, unacquainted with him, from the mere sympathy of glory, instantly professed for him sentiments of enthusiasm worthy of her own Corinne; she wrote him long and numerous epistles, full of wit, imagination, and metaphysical erudition: it was an error, she observed, arising only from human institutions, that could have united him with the meek, the tranquil, Madame Bonaparte; it was a soul of fire like her’s (Madame de Staël’s) that nature had undoubtedly destined to be the companion of a hero like him.
I refer to the Campaigns in Italy to shew that this forwardness on the part of Madame de Staël was not checked by the circumstance of meeting with no return. With a perseverance never to be disheartened, she succeeded, at a later period, in forming some degree of acquaintance, so far even as to be allowed to visit; and she used this privilege, said the Emperor, to a disagreeable extent. It is unquestionably true, as has been reported, that the General, wishing to make her sensible of it, one day caused her to be told, by way of excuse, that he was scarcely dressed; and that she replied promptly and seriously, that it was unimportant, for that genius was of no sex.
From Madame de Staël we were naturally led to her father, M. Necker. The Emperor related, that at Geneva, in his way to Marengo, he received a visit from him, wherein he made known, in an awkward manner enough, his desire to be admitted again to the Administration—a desire, by the by, which M. Calonne, his rival, subsequently came to Paris to express with a degree of levity beyond conception. M. Necker afterwards wrote a dangerous work upon the policy of France, which he attempted to prove could no longer exist either as a monarchy or a republic, and in which he called the First Consul l’homme necessaire.
The First Consul proscribed the work, which, at that time, might have been highly prejudicial to him, and committed the task of refuting it to the Consul Lebrun, “who in his elegant prose,” said the Emperor, executed prompt and ample justice upon it. The Necker coterie was irritated, and Madame de Staël, engaging in some intrigues, received an order to quit France: thenceforth she became an ardent and strenuous enemy. Nevertheless, on the return from the Island of Elba, she wrote or sent to the Emperor, to express, in her peculiar way, the enthusiasm which this wonderful event had excited in her; that she was overcome; that this last act was not that of a mortal; that it had at once raised its author to the skies. Then, returning to herself, she concluded by hinting that, if the Emperor would condescend to allow the payment of the two millions, for which an order in her favour had already been signed by the King, her pen and her principles should be devoted for ever after to his interest.—The Emperor desired she might be informed, in answer, that nothing could flatter him more highly than her approbation, because he fully appreciated her talents; but that he really was not rich enough to purchase it at that price.
MY NEW LODGING DESCRIBED.—MORNING VISIT, &C.
21st.—I had at length taken possession of the new lodging built for me instead of my former oven. Upon a soil constantly damp had been placed a floor eighteen feet long by eleven wide; this was surrounded by a wall of a foot and half in thickness, composed of loam, and which might have been kicked down with the foot: at the height of seven feet it was covered with a roof of boards, defended by a coating of paper and tar. Such were the construction and the outline of my new palace, divided into two apartments, one of which contained two beds separated by a chest of drawers, and afforded room for only a single chair; the other, at once my saloon and my library, had a single window strongly fastened up on account of the violence of the winds and rain: on the right and left of it were two writing-tables, for me and my son; on the opposite side a couch and two chairs. This was the whole of the furniture and accommodations: add to this that the aspect of the two windows is towards a wind constantly blowing from the same quarter, and generally accompanied with rain, often very heavy, and which, previously to our taking possession, already forced its way through the cracks, or soaked through the walls and the roof. I had just passed my first night in these new quarters; I was indisposed, and my change of bed had prevented me from sleeping. I was informed about seven o’clock, that the Emperor was going out on horseback; I replied that, not feeling myself well, I should endeavour to take some rest; but only a few minutes had elapsed when a person hastily entered my apartment, opened my curtains with an air of authority, found fault with me for being so idle, and pronounced that my ailments must be shaken off; then,[then,] struck with the smell of the paint, the extreme smallness of the room, and the closeness of the two beds, he decided that we could no longer be suffered to sleep huddled together in that way; that it was far too unwholesome; and that I must return to the bed in the topographical cabinet, which I ought not to abandon through false delicacy; and that, if I occasioned any inconvenience there, I should be told of it. It will have been guessed that this person was the Emperor. I was, of course, soon out of bed, dressed, and well. The Emperor was, however, already far off: I had to seek him in the park. After I had overtaken him, our conversation turned on the long audience that he had given to Governor Wilks on the preceding day. He dwelt, with much good humour, on the great importance which my work appeared to have given me in the Governor’s eyes, and the extreme good-will towards me with which it seemed to have inspired him. “Of course,” continued he, “it is understood that these sentiments are to be mutual; the usual regard and fraternity of authors, as long as they do not criticize each other. And is he aware of your relationship to the venerable Las Casas?” I answered that I knew nothing of the matter; but General Gourgaud, who was on the other side of the Emperor, replied in the affirmative. “And how do you know it yourself?” said the Emperor to me; “Are you not romancing with us?” “The following, Sire, are my proofs. Our family had been two hundred years in France, when Barthelemi de Las Casas flourished in Spain; but the Spanish historians all describe him as a native of the same city from which we ourselves came, that is to say, Seville. They all mention him as of an ancient family, of French origin, and state his ancestors to have passed into Spain precisely at the time when our family went there.”—“What, then, you are not Spanish? He was French, as well as you!”—“Yes, Sire.”—“Let us hear all about it; come, Sir Castellan, Sir Knight-errant, Sir Paladin,—let us see you in your glory; unrol your old parchments; come, enjoy yourself.”—“Sire, one of my ancestors followed Henry Count of Burgundy, who, at the head of a few crusaders, achieved the conquest of Portugal, about the year 1100. He was his standard-bearer at the famous battle of Ourique, which founded the Portugese monarchy. Afterwards we returned to France with Queen Blanche, when she came to be married to the father of St. Louis. Sire, this is the whole.”