NEW VEXATIONS.—THE EMPEROR SELDOM STIRS OUT.—TRISTAN.—LA FONTAINE’S FABLES.—THE BELLY RULES THE WORLD.—DIFFICULTY OF JUDGING OF MEN.
Tuesday 9th to Thursday 11th.—The Governor continues to annoy us, and is incessantly aggravating the misery of our situation. He seems resolved to place us in close confinement. He has published a proclamation in the town, ordering that all letters and notes addressed by us to the inhabitants, on any occasion whatever, shall be sent to him within twenty-four hours. He has also forbidden them to visit the Grand Marshal and his wife, who live at the entrance of our enclosure. In the beginning of this blockade of Madame Bertrand[Bertrand], it was so rigorously enforced that some medicines sent hence by the doctor for one of the Grand Marshal’s people, who was dying, could not be delivered; and it was only as an accommodation that the officer at last took upon him to let them pass over the wall.
The Governor, having read in a letter, sent by one of us to Europe, that the writer wanted several articles of clothing, linen, &c., came and told him that he might have most of those articles out of the stores sent by Government for Napoleon: and the individual replying that he preferred purchasing them, being unwilling to incur any obligation, the Governor drily answered that he might pay for them if he had a fancy to do so. To which the other replied, “Excuse me, Sir, I like to choose my shops myself.” In consequence of this, the Governor afterwards sent him word, by the Doctor, that he should complain of him, for having contemptuously refused the gifts of Government. The other instantly replied that he should be much obliged to him; being much happier to give him an opportunity of transmitting refusals than requests, to the ministers he served.
All these petty tricks, the length and interest of our readings, and the continuance of the bad weather, which is dreadful, confine the Emperor more closely than ever to the house, and overwhelm him with melancholy: he now never stirs abroad. His amusement is now limited to going occasionally, about five o’clock, to visit Madame de Montholon, who has not yet gone abroad since her lying-in. We all meet there, and the Emperor converses for half an hour, or three-quarters, before he returns to his own apartment.
To-day he met little Tristan, the eldest son of M. de Montholon, who is only seven or eight years old, and runs about all day. The Emperor placed him between his knees, and tried to make him recite some fables, of which the poor child did not understand two words out of ten. The Emperor laughed heartily, blaming the practice of putting La Fontaine into the hands of children who cannot understand him; and began to explain these fables to Tristan; endeavouring to render their meaning more palpable to him; nor could any thing be more curious than the simplicity, justice, and logic of his illustrations.
Whilst he was explaining the fable of the Wolf and the Lamb, it was extremely laughable to hear the poor child say Sire, and your Majesty, and in speaking of the wolf, and to the Emperor, confuse all his expressions; whilst his ideas were probably in still greater confusion.
The Emperor thought this fable had far too much irony in it to be within the comprehension of children. It was likewise defective, he observed, in its principle and its moral; and this was the first time that he had been struck with these defects. It was false that the argument of the stronger was always the best; and if it sometimes happened so, in fact, that, he said, was the very evil, the abuse, which was to be condemned. The wolf, ought, therefore, to have been strangled in devouring the lamb.
Tristan is very idle. He confessed to the Emperor that he did not work every day. “Do you not eat every day?” said the Emperor to him, “Yes, Sire.” “Well, then, you ought to work every day; no one should eat who does not work.” “Oh! if that be the case, I will work every day,” said the child, quickly. “Such is the influence of the belly,” said the Emperor, patting that of little Tristan. "It is hunger that makes the world move. Come, my little man, if you are a good boy, we’ll make a page of you." "But I won’t be one," said Tristan, pouting and looking sulky.
Our afternoons were occupied in reading something selected in hopes of enabling us to kill time for an hour or two. At this period we were reading a voyage to Spitzbergen; the shipwreck of the Dutch at Nova Zembla; the Causes celébres, the trial of Calas; those of Martinguerre and the Marchioness of Brinvilliers. The author observed, in some part of the work, that the face often gave a false idea of the character. The Emperor paused, laid down the book, and said, with a look and tone that denoted conviction: “It is most true, and it is also true that no study will enable us to avoid this deception. How many proofs of this kind have I had! For instance, I had a person about me; his countenance undoubtedly.... But after all he had a mischievous eye; I ought to have guessed something from that.” He then went into some particulars of the character of the person in question. They had known each other from infancy, he said; he had long placed his entire confidence in this individual, who had talent and resources; the Emperor even thought that he had been attached and faithful—"But he was much too covetous," said he, “he was too fond of money. When I was dictating to him, and he sometimes had to write millions, it was never without a peculiar change of countenance, a smacking of his lips, and restlessness on his chair, which several times induced me to ask what ailed him.”
The Emperor said this vice was too glaring to allow of his retaining this person about him; but that, considering his other qualities, he ought, perhaps, to have contented himself with removing him into a different situation.
THE IRON MASK, &C.—INGENIOUS FICTION.
Friday, 12th.—The conversation to-day led us to speak of the Iron Mask, and we took a review of what has been said on the subject by Voltaire, Dutens, and others; and of what is found respecting him in Richelieu’s Memoirs. In these it is well known that he is said to have been the twin-brother of Louis XIV., and the elder of the two. On this occasion, some one added that, being employed in making out a pedigree, a person had come to him to demonstrate seriously to him that Napoleon was a lineal descendant from this Iron Mask, and consequently the legitimate heir of Louis XIII. and Henry IV., in preference to Louis XIV. and all his issue. The Emperor also said that he had heard something about it, and added that the credulity of mankind and their love of the marvellous are so great that it would not have been difficult to make out and substantiate something of the kind for the multitude, and that there would not have been wanting certain persons in the Senate to sanction it; probably, he observed, the very men who at a later period were so eager to revile him, as soon as they saw him in adversity.
We then went on to trace the foundation and the progress of this story. The name of the Governor of the Island of St. Marguerite, to whom the custody of the Iron Mask was entrusted, was M. de Bonpart, a circumstance, to begin with, very singular. This man, it was asserted, was aware of the origin of his prisoner. He had a daughter: she and the prisoner were both young; they saw each other and loved. The Governor, having informed the Court of this circumstance, it was decided that there was no great objection to allowing the unfortunate captive to seek in love an alleviation of his misery, and they were married.
The person who was speaking at this moment said that, at the time the above particulars were related to him, he had been very much entertained by them, and had happened to say that he thought the story very ingeniously imagined; upon which the narrator of it became excessively angry, maintaining that the marriage could very easily be verified by the registers of one of the parishes of Marseilles, which he named. He added that the children born of this marriage were silently and secretly conveyed to Corsica, where the difference of language, chance, or perhaps intention had, changed the name of Bonpart into Bonaparte and Buonaparte, which, after all, has the same meaning, and is in fact the same thing.
After this anecdote, it was added that, at the time of the revolution, a similar story had been made in favour of the Orleans branch. It was founded in a document found in the Bastille, and surmised that Anne of Austria, who was brought to bed after twenty-three years of sterility, had been delivered of a girl, and that Louis XIII. fearing she might have no more children, had been induced to put away that girl and falsely to substitute in her stead a boy, which was Louis XIV.; that the following year, however, the Queen had been again brought to bed, and this time really of a boy, which boy was Philip, the head of the house of Orleans, who thus turned out to be with his descendants the legitimate heirs to the throne, whilst Louis XIV. and his issue were only intruders and usurpers. According to that story the Iron Mask was a girl. A pamphlet on this subject was circulated in the provinces at the time the Bastille was taken, but the story did not gain credit, and very quietly disappeared, without having, it seems, engaged the attention of the capital even for a moment.
JUNOT, HIS WIFE, &C.
Saturday, 13th.—The conversation again fell upon Junot. Of the considerable fortunes which the Emperor had bestowed, that of Junot, he said, was one of the most extravagant. The sums he had given him almost exceeded belief, and yet he was always in debt; he had squandered treasures, without credit to himself, without discernment or taste, and, too frequently, the Emperor added, in gross debauchery.
He has been known more than once, after having taken a most copious and substantial breakfast, in his magnificent hotel at Paris, fired with anger at the most trifling demand made by the most insignificant creditor, to threaten to pay the debt with his sword. Every time he saw the Emperor, said Napoleon, it was to hint at some fresh embarrassment, be reprimanded and assisted. In the campaign of Austerlitz, he came to the Emperor at Schönbrun; but this time, said Napoleon, it was not to intercede precisely for himself. He took at this period a most lively interest in the beautiful Madame Recamier. He had just arrived from Paris, and began his conversation with the Emperor by a most virulent philippic against M. de Marbois, then Minister of the Treasury, who had been base enough, he said, to refuse M. Recamier a loan of only two millions, to save him from bankruptcy. All Paris was indignant. This Marbois, he added, was a wicked man, an unworthy servant, who did not love the Emperor. He, Junot, had gone to him and had used every endeavour to persuade him, but to no purpose. He had represented to him the enormity of his conduct, and had assured him (and such added Junot was the general opinion in Paris,) that if the Emperor had been in the capital he would have immediately ordered the money to be given to M. Recamier. “He was on a wrong scent,” said the Emperor, "for I coolly replied to this passionate lover who was almost out of his senses: ‘You and Paris are both mistaken, I should not have ordered even two thousand sous to be given; and I should have been very much displeased with De Marbois if he had acted otherwise than he has done. I am not Madame Recamier’s lover, and I do not come forward to the assistance of merchants who keep up an establishment of six hundred thousands francs per annum. Know that, M. Junot, and learn also that the Treasury does not lend money to those whom it knows to have been long since on the road to bankruptcy; it has other claims to satisfy.’ Junot," added the Emperor, “was obliged to calm his emotion, thinking probably that there were hard-hearted people at Vienna as well as at Paris.”
Junot travelled as fast as the Emperor himself; he had his relays, said Napoleon, hundreds of horses, and other extravagances of the kind.
The Emperor added that, not so much in his capacity as sovereign, but as being fond of Junot, and actuated also by a sort of feeling derived from the similarity of birth-place, he being also originally from Corsica, he had one day sent for Madame Junot, in order to give her some paternal admonitions on the subject of the extravagance of her husband’s expenditure, the profusion of diamonds which she herself had inconsiderately displayed after her return from Portugal, and her intimate connections with a certain foreigner, which might give umbrage in a political point of view. But she rejected this advice, dictated alone by concern for her interest. “She grew angry,” said the Emperor, “and treated me like a child; nothing then remained for me to do but to send her about her business, and abandon her to her fate. She fancied herself a princess of the family of the Comnenes; and Junot had been made to believe it when he was induced to marry her. Her family was from Corsica, and resided in the neighbourhood of mine; they were under great obligations to my mother, not merely for her benevolence towards them, but for services of a more positive nature.” The Emperor then gave the following explanation:
"The Genoese, in evacuating the Morea, had formerly carried a colony of Maniotes to Corsica and settled them in the neighbourhood of Ajaccio. M. de Vergennes, while he was ambassador at Constantinople, married a Greek woman; and, on his return to France, being greatly in favour with Louis XVI. he took it into his head that he must have married a princess. It so happened that some political circumstances occurred to favour his wish; the downfall of Constantinople was believed in at that moment, and it would have suited France to advance some pretensions to a portion of that empire. A man of the name of Comnene, a relation of Madame de Vergennes, was therefore sent for from the Greek colony near Ajaccio, and, having been brought to Versailles, was soon after, by virtue of letters-patent of Louis XVI., acknowledged a descendant from the Emperors of Constantinople. This said Comnene was a large farmer, whose sister had unexpectedly married, some years before, a Frenchman, a clerk in the victualling department named P—. After the elevation of the family, and through the interest of M, de Vergennes, this P—, clerk in the victualling department, had become a man of great consequence, having had the contract for supplying the whole army of Rochambeau. The daughter of the clerk was this very Madame Junot, duchess of Abrantes.
“Junot, in the campaign of Russia, gave me great cause of dissatisfaction;” said the Emperor, “he was no longer the same man, and committed some gross blunders which cost us dear.”
After the return from Moscow, Junot, in consequence of the dissatisfaction he had given, lost the governorship of Paris; and the Emperor sent him to Venice. However that species of disgrace was almost immediately softened, by his appointment as Governor-general of Illyria; but the blow was struck. The frequent incoherences which had been observed in Junot’s behaviour for some time past, and which had arisen from the excesses in which he had indulged, broke out at last into complete insanity. It was necessary to secure him, and to convey him home to his paternal mansion, where he died miserably shortly afterwards, having mutilated his person with his own hands. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
MARSHAL LANNES.—MURAT AND HIS WIFE, &C.
Sunday, 14th.—During the dinner, speaking of dress, it was said that, amongst the number of great personages of that time, none had carried extravagance in that point further than Murat, and yet, some one observed, his dress was for the most part so singular and fantastic that the public called him King Franconi.[[28]]
The Emperor laughed very heartily, and confessed that certain costumes and manners sometimes gave to Murat the appearance of a quack operator or a mountebank. It was added that Bernadotte also took infinite pains with his dress, and that Lannes bestowed much time upon his. The Emperor expressed himself much surprised at what he had heard respecting the two latter, and this led him to repeat how sincerely he regretted the loss of Marshal Lannes. “Poor Lannes,” said he, "had passed the night which preceded the battle, in Vienna, and not alone. He appeared on the field without having taken any food, and fought the whole day. The physician said that this triple concurrence of circumstances caused his death, he required a great deal of strength after the wound to enable him to bear it, and unfortunately nature was almost exhausted before.
“It is generally said,” the Emperor observed, “that there are certain wounds, to which death seems preferable; but this is very seldom the case, I assure you. It is at the moment we are going to part with existence that we cling to it with all our might. Lannes, the most courageous of men, deprived of both his legs, would not hear of death, and was irritated to such a degree as to declare that the two surgeons who attended him deserved to be hanged for behaving so brutally towards a Marshal. He had unfortunately overheard them whisper to each other, as they thought without being heard, that it was impossible he could recover. Every moment the unfortunate Lannes called for the Emperor; he twined himself round me,” said Napoleon, “with all he had left of life; he would hear of no one but me, he thought but of me; it was a kind of instinct! Undoubtedly he loved his wife and children better than me; yet he did not speak of them: it was he that protected them, whilst I on the contrary was his protector. I was for him something vague and undefined, a superior being, his Providence, which he implored!”
Somebody then observed that the world had spoken very differently on the subject; that it had been reported that Lannes had died like a maniac, vociferating imprecations against the Emperor, at whom he seemed enraged; and it was added that he had always an aversion to the Emperor, and had often manifested it to him with insolence. “What an absurdity,” said the Emperor, “Lannes, on the contrary, adored me. He was assuredly one of the men on whom I could most implicitly rely. It is very true that, in the impetuosity of his disposition, he has sometimes suffered some hasty expressions against me to escape his lips, but he would probably have broken the head of any person who had chanced to hear them.”
Returning to Murat, some one observed that he had greatly influenced the unfortunate events of 1814. “He determined them,” said the Emperor, “he is one of the principal causes of our being here. But the fault is originally mine. There were several men whom I had made too great; I had raised them above the sphere of their intelligence. I was reading, some days since, his proclamation on abandoning the Viceroy, which I had not seen before. It is difficult to conceive any thing disgraced by a greater degree of turpitude: he says in that document that the moment is come to choose between two banners, that of crime and that of virtue. It is my banner which he calls the banner of crime! and it is Murat, my creature, the husband of my sister, the man who owed every thing to me, who would have been nothing without me, who exists by me, and is known through me alone—it is Murat who writes this! It is impossible to desert the cause of misfortune with more unfeeling brutality; and to run with more unblushing baseness to hail a new destiny.”
From that moment, Madame (mother of the Emperor) refused to have any thing more to do with either Murat or his wife; to all their entreaties she invariably answered that she held traitors and treachery in abhorrence. As soon as she was at Rome, after the disasters of 1814, Murat hastened to send her eight magnificent horses out of his stables at Naples; but Madame would not accept them. She resisted, in like manner, every effort of her daughter Caroline, who constantly repeated that, after all, the fault was not hers; that she had no share in it; that she could not command her husband. But Madame answered, like Clytemnestra—"If you could not command him, you ought at least to have opposed him:—but what struggles have you made? what blood has flowed? At the expense of your own life, you ought to have defended your brother, your benefactor, your master, against the sanguinary attempts of your husband.
“On my return from Elba,” said the Emperor, "Murat’s head was turned, on hearing that I had landed in France. The first intelligence he received of this event informed him that I was at Lyons. He was accustomed to my great returns of fortune; he had more than once seen me placed in most extraordinary circumstances. On this occasion, he thought me already master of all Europe, and determined to endeavour to wrest Italy from me; for that was his object, the aim of all his hopes. It was in vain that some men, of the greatest influence amongst the nations which he attempted to excite to rebellion, threw themselves at his feet and assured him that he was mistaken; that the Italians had a king on whom alone they had bestowed their love and their esteem. Nothing could stop him; he ruined himself, and contributed to ruin us a second time; for Austria, supposing that he was acting at my instigation, would not believe my professions, and mistrusted me. Murat’s unfortunate end corresponds with his conduct. Murat was endowed with extraordinary courage and little intelligence. The too great disproportion between those two qualities explains the man entirely. It was difficult, even impossible, to be more courageous than Murat and Lannes; but Murat had remained courageous and nothing more. The mind of Lannes, on the contrary, had risen to the level of his courage; he had become a giant. However[However]," said the Emperor, in ending the conversation, “the execution of Murat is nevertheless horrible. It is an event in the history of the morals of Europe; an infraction of the rules of public decorum.—A king has caused another king, acknowledged by all the others, to be shot! What a spell he has broken!” . . . . . . . . .
SUMMARY OF THE THREE MONTHS OF
APRIL, MAY, AND JUNE.
I have already observed that, in a work like the present, it is impossible to keep up in any point a unity of interest and of object; I shall, therefore, now attempt to supply this defect by retracing, in a very few words, and uninterruptedly, the circumstances of aggravation which have occurred in the Emperor’s situation during these three months; the repeated instances of ill-treatment to which he has been subjected; the visible decline of his health; the general tenor of his habits; the principal topics of his conversation:—in a word, the bulletin, both physical and moral, of his person, during that short space of time.
1st. A new Governor arrives, who turns out to be a man of either very narrow views, or very bad intentions—a corporal with his watch-word, instead of a general with his instructions.
2dly. A declaration is required from every one of the captives that he submits beforehand to all the restrictions that may be imposed on Napoleon, and this in the hopes of detaching them from his person.
3dly. An official communication is made to us of the convention of the allied Sovereigns, who, without further ceremony, proclaim and sanction the banishment of Napoleon.
4thly. We receive the bill of the British Parliament, which converts into a law the act of oppression of the English ministers towards the person of Napoleon.
5thly. Lastly, Commissioners come in the name of their Sovereigns, to watch over the fetters, and contemplate the sufferings of the victim. Thus our horizon grows darker and darker, our chains are shortened, all hopes of amelioration vanish, and the most gloomy prospects are all that the future presents.
The arrival of the new Governor is the signal for the infliction of greater hardships. For the person of the Emperor it is the commencement of a new series of torments; every day he is wounded by the recurrence of some petty vexation.
The first step of Sir Hudson Lowe is an insult; his first word one of cruelty; one of his first acts, an act of inhumanity.
After that, he seems to have no other occupation, to have received no other instruction, than to torment us and make us suffer under every shape, on every occasion, and in every way.
The Emperor, who had at first resolved to adopt a system of strict stoicism, is nevertheless moved with indignation at this conduct, and expresses himself in strong terms. Conversations grow warm; the breach is made; it will grow wider every day.
The Emperor’s health is visibly affected, and we can observe a rapid alteration. Contrary to his natural temperament, he very frequently feels indisposed; on one occasion he is confined to his room for six days running, without going out at all. A secret melancholy, which endeavours to conceal itself from every eye, and perhaps from his own, begins to take possession of him; the latent seeds of disease appear already to be lurking in his system. He contracts every day the circle, already so confined, of his movements and his diversions. He gives up riding on horseback; he no longer invites any English to dinner,—he even abandons his daily occupations. The dictations in which he had hitherto seemed to take pleasure, are suspended. Disgust had seized him, he would sometimes say to me, and he could not muster courage enough to resume them. The greatest part of his days is passed in turning over books in his own apartment, or in conversing with us either publicly or in private; and in the evening, after dinner, he reads to us some plays of our great poets, or any other work which chance or the choice of the moment brings to his hand.
Yet the serenity of his mind, the equanimity of his disposition towards us, are not in the least impaired; on the contrary, we seem more united like one family. He is more ours, and we belong more to him; his conversations offer a greater degree of confidence, freedom, and interest.
He would now often send for me into his room, to converse with him; and these private conversations would sometimes lead him to subjects of great importance,—such as the war in Russia, that of Spain, the conferences of Tilsit and Erfurth, which will be found in this portion of my Memoirs.
END OF VOL. II.
ANDOVER: STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY B. BENSLEY.