ON A HOLE IN THE GARDEN.
29th.—During dinner somebody mentioned a pool which stands in our garden, not far from the house, and which is deep enough to admit of a lamb having once been drowned in it, in attempting to drink. The Emperor said on that occasion, to one of the inmates of the house: “Is it possible, Sir, that you have not yet had this pool filled up? How guilty you would be, and what would not your grief be, if your son were to be drowned in it, as it might easily happen!” The person thus censured answered that he had often intended to have it done, but that it was impossible to get workmen. “That is not an excuse,” said the Emperor sharply: “if my son were here, I should go and fill it up with my own hands.”
The Emperor was already in bed when he sent for me: he wished, he said, to put some questions to me, and to inquire concerning some dates connected with matters which concerned us materially. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
ELOQUENT DICTATIONS OF THE EMPEROR.—CHARACTERISTIC
DETAILS, AND PARTICULARS.
30th.—Whenever the Emperor took up a subject, if he was in the least animated, his language was fit to be printed. He has often, when an idea struck him forcibly, dictated in an off-hand way to any one of us who happened to be in his way, pages of the most polished diction. The other gentlemen of his suite must possess a great many of these dictations, which are all most valuable. Unfortunately for me, the weak state of my eyes, which prevented me from writing, most frequently deprived me of this advantage.
On one occasion, when the English ministerial newspapers adverted to the treasures which Napoleon must possess, and which he, no doubt, concealed, the Emperor dictated as follows:
“You wish to know the treasures of Napoleon? They are immense, it is true, but they are all exposed to light. They are: The noble harbours of Antwerp and Flushing, which are capable of containing the largest fleets, and of protecting them against the ice from the sea,—the hydraulic works at Dunkirk, Havre, and Nice,—the immense harbour of Cherbourg,—the maritime works at Venice,—the beautiful roads from Antwerp to Amsterdam; from Mentz to Metz; from Bordeaux to Bayonne;—the passes of the Simplon, of Mont Cenis, of Mont Genevre, of La Corniche, which open a communication through the Alps in four different directions; and which exceed in grandeur, in boldness, and in skill of execution, all the works of the Romans: in these alone you will find eight hundred millions;—the roads from the Pyrenees to the Alps, from Parma to Spezzia, from Savona to Piedmont,—the bridges of Jena, Austerlitz, the Arts, Sevres, Tours, Rouanne, Lyons, Turin, of the Isere, of the Durance, of Bordeaux, of Rouen, &c.—the canal which connects the Rhine with the Rhone by the Doubs, and thus unites the North Sea with the Mediterranean; the canal which connects the Scheldt with the Somme, and thus joins Paris and Amsterdam; the canal which unites the Rance with the Vilaine; the canal of Arles, that of Pavia, and the canal of the Rhine—the draining of the marshes of Burgoing, of the Cotentin, of Rochfort—the rebuilding of the greater number of the churches destroyed during the Revolution—the building of others—the institution of numerous establishments of industry for the suppression of mendicity—the works at the Louvre—the construction of public warehouses, of the Bank, of the canal of the Ourcq—the distribution of water in the city of Paris—the numerous sewers, the quays, the embellishments, and the monuments of that large capital—the works for the embellishment of Rome—the re-establishment of the manufactures of Lyons—the creation of many hundreds of cotton manufactories for spinning and for weaving, which employ several millions of hands—funds accumulated to establish upwards of 400 manufactories of sugar from beet-root, for the consumption of part of France, and which would have furnished sugar at the same price as the West Indies, if they had continued to receive encouragement for only four years longer—the substitution of woad for indigo, which would have been at last brought to equal in quality, and not to exceed in price, the indigo from the Colonies—numerous manufactories for all kinds of objects of art, &c.—fifty millions expended in repairing and beautifying the palaces belonging to the Crown—sixty millions in furniture for the palaces belonging to the Crown in France and in Holland, at Turin, and at Rome—sixty millions in diamonds for the Crown, all purchased with Napoleon’s money—the Regent (the only diamond that was left belonging to the former diamonds of the Crown) withdrawn from the hands of the Jews at Berlin, with whom it had been pledged for three millions—the Napoleon Museum, valued at upwards of four hundred millions, filled with objects legitimately acquired either by money or treaties of peace known to the whole world, by virtue of which the master-pieces it contains were given in lieu of territory or of contributions—several millions amassed for the encouragement of agriculture, which is the paramount consideration for the interest of France—the introduction into France of Merino sheep, &c.——these form a treasure of several thousand millions, which will endure for ages! these are the monuments that will confute calumny!”
History will say that all these things were accomplished amidst perpetual wars, without having recourse to any loan, and whilst the national debt was even diminishing every day, and that nearly fifty millions of taxes had been remitted. Very large sums still remained in his private treasury; they were guaranteed to him by the treaty of Fontainebleau, as the result of the savings effected on his civil list and of his other private revenues. These sums were divided and did not go entirely into the public treasury, nor altogether into the treasury of France!!
On another occasion, the Emperor reading in an English newspaper that Lord Castlereagh had said, at a meeting in Ireland, that Napoleon had declared at St. Helena that he never would have made peace with England but to deceive her, to take her by surprise, and to destroy her; and that, if the French army was attached to the Emperor, it was because he was in the habit of giving the daughters of the richest families of his empire in marriage to his soldiers: the Emperor, moved with indignation, dictated as follows: “These calumnies uttered against a man who is so barbarously oppressed, and whose voice is not allowed to be heard in answer to them, will be disbelieved by all persons well educated and susceptible of feeling. When Napoleon was seated on the first throne in the world, then no doubt his enemies had a right to say whatever they pleased; his actions were public, and were a sufficient answer to them; at any rate, that conduct now belonged to public opinion, and history; but to utter new and base calumnies against him at the present moment is an act of the utmost meanness and cowardice, and which will not answer the end proposed. Millions of libels have been and are still published every day, but they are without effect. Sixty millions of men, of the most polished nations in the world, raise their voices to confute them, and fifty thousand English, who are now travelling on the Continent, will, on their return home, publish the truth to the inhabitants of the three kingdoms of Great Britain, who will blush at having been so grossly deceived.
“As for the Bill, by virtue of which Napoleon has been dragged to this rock, it is an act of proscription similar to those of Sylla, and still more atrocious. The Romans unrelentingly pursued Hannibal to the utmost extremities of Bithynia; and Flaminius persuaded King Prusias to assent to the death of that great man; yet at Rome Flaminius was accused of having acted thus in order to satisfy his personal hatred. It was in vain that he urged in his defence that Hannibal, yet in the vigour of life, might still become a dangerous enemy, and that his death was necessary; a thousand voices were raised, and answered that acts of injustice and ungenerous actions can never be useful to a great nation; and that, upon such pretences as that now set forth, murder, poisoning, and every species of crime might be justified! Succeeding generations reproached their ancestors with this base act. They would have paid a high price to efface the stain from their history, and, since the revival of letters among modern nations, there is not a generation that has not added its imprecations to those pronounced by Hannibal at the moment when he drank the fatal cup: he cursed Rome, who, whilst her fleets and legions covered Europe, Asia, and Africa, wreaked her vengeance against a man alone and unprotected, because she feared, or pretended to fear, him.
“The Romans, however, never violated the rights of hospitality: Sylla found an asylum in the house of Marius. Flaminius, before he proscribed Hannibal, did not receive him on board his ship and declare that he had orders to treat him favourably; the Roman fleet did not convey him to the Port of Ostia; and Hannibal, instead of placing himself under the protection of the Romans, preferred trusting his person to a King of Asia. When he was proscribed, he was not under the protection of the Roman flag; he was under the banners of a king who was an enemy of Rome.
“If ever, in the revolutions of ages, a King of England should be brought before the awful tribunal of his nation, his defenders will urge in his favour the sacred character of a king, the respect due to the throne, to all crowned heads, to the anointed of the Lord! But his accusers will have a right to answer thus: ‘One of the ancestors of this King, whom you defend, banished a man that was his guest, in time of peace; afraid to put him to death in the presence of a nation governed by positive laws and by regular and public forms, he caused his victim to be exposed on the most unhealthy point of a rock, situated in another hemisphere, in the midst of the ocean, where this guest perished, after a long agony, a prey to the climate, to want, to insults of every kind! Yet that guest was also a great Sovereign, raised to the throne on the shields of thirty-six millions of citizens. He had been master of almost every Capital of Europe; the greatest Kings composed his Court; he was generous towards all; he was during twenty years the arbiter of nations; his family was allied to every reigning family, even to that of England; he was twice the anointed of the Lord; twice consecrated by the august ceremonies of religion!!!’”
This passage is certainly very fine, for its truth, its diction, and above all, for its historical richness.
The Emperor always dictated without the least preparation. I never saw him, on any occasion, make any research respecting our history or that of any other nation; and yet no man ever quoted history more faithfully, more apropos, or more frequently. One might have supposed that he knew history by quotations only, and that these quotations occurred to him as by inspiration. And here I must be allowed to mention a fact which has often struck me, and which I never could satisfactorily account for to myself; but it is so very remarkable, and I have witnessed it so often, that I cannot pass it in silence. It is that Napoleon seems to possess a stock of information on several points, which remains within him, in reserve as it were, to burst forth with splendour on remarkable occasions, and which in his moments of carelessness appears to be not only slumbering, but almost unknown to him altogether. With respect to history, for instance, how often has it happened that he has asked me whether St. Louis reigned before or after Philip the Fair, and other questions of the same kind. But, when occasion offered, when his moment came, then he would quote without hesitation, and with the most minute details; and when I have sometimes happened to be in doubt, and to go and verify, I have always found him to be right and most scrupulously exact: I have never been able to detect him in error.
Another singular peculiarity in him of the same kind is this:—In his common intercourse of life, and his familiar conversation, the Emperor mutilated the names most familiar to him, even ours; yet I do not think that this would have happened to him on a public occasion. I have heard him many times, during our walks, repeat the celebrated speech of Augustus; and he has never missed saying, “Take a seat, Sylla.”[[30]] He would frequently create names of persons according to his fancy; and, when he had once adopted them, they remained fixed in his mind, although we pronounced them as they should be, a hundred times in the day, within his hearing; but he would have been struck if we had used them as he had altered them. It was the same with respect to orthography: in general, he did not attend to it; yet, if our copies had contained any faults of spelling, he would have complained of it. One day the Emperor said to me; “You do not write orthographically, do you?” This question gave rise to a sarcastic smile from a bystander, who thought that it was meant to convey a reproach. The Emperor, who saw this, continued:—“At least, I suppose you do not; for a man occupied with public or other important business, a Minister, for instance, cannot, and need not, attend to orthography. His ideas must flow faster than his hand can trace; he has only time for hieroglyphics; he must put letters for words, and words for sentences; and leave the scribes to make it out afterwards.”—The Emperor left a great deal for the copyists to do; he was their torment: his handwriting actually formed hieroglyphics; he often could not decipher it himself. My son was one day reading to him a chapter of the Campaign of Italy: on a sudden he stopped short, unable to make out the writing. “The little blockhead,” said the Emperor, “cannot read his own writing!”—“It is not mine, Sire.”—“And whose then?” “Your Majesty’s.”—“How, you little rogue! do you mean to insult me?” The Emperor took the manuscript, tried a long while to read it, and at last threw it down, saying, “He is right: I cannot tell myself what is written.”—He has often sent the copyists to me, to try to read to them what he had himself been unable to decipher.
The Emperor accounted for the clearness of his ideas, and the faculty of extremely protracted application which he possessed, by saying that the different affairs were arranged in his head as in a closet. “When I wish to turn from any business,” said he, “I close the drawer which contains it, and I open that which contains another. They do not mix together, and do not fatigue me or inconvenience me.” He had never been kept awake, he said, by an involuntary pre-occupation of mind. If I wish to sleep, I shut up all the drawers, and I am soon asleep.[asleep.] So that he had always, he added, slept when he wanted rest, and almost at will.
MY ATLAS.—PREDESTINATION, &C.—THE GOVERNOR MAKES FRUITLESS ATTEMPTS TO BE RECEIVED BY THE EMPEROR.
Tuesday, 1st October. When I entered the Emperor’s room, he had my Atlas in his hands. He turned over several of the genealogical maps, whose relation and correspondence with each other he now understands remarkably well. On closing the book, he said, “What a concatenation! how each part results from and corroborates what goes before it! How every part unfolds itself and remains fixed in the mind! Las Cases, if you had done nothing more than point out the true method for instruction, you would still have rendered a most essential service. Every one may now clothe the skeleton as they like; it will, no doubt, be improved upon, but the first conception is yours,” &c.
Amongst the numerous subjects of conversation which followed, predestination was mentioned. The Emperor made many remarkable observations on that subject; amongst others, “Pray,” said he, “am I not said to be given to the belief in predestination?” “Yes, Sire, at least by many people.” “Well, well! let them say on; one may sometimes be tempted to imitate, and it may occasionally be useful.... But what are men!... How much easier it is to occupy their attention, and to strike their imaginations, by absurdities than by rational ideas! But can a man of sound sense listen for one moment to such a doctrine? Either predestination admits the existence of free will, or it rejects it. If it admits it, what kind of predetermined result is that which the mere will, a step, a word, may alter or modify, ad infinitum? If predestination, on the contrary, rejects the existence of free will, it is quite another question; in that case a child need only be thrown into its cradle as soon as it is born; there is no necessity for bestowing the least care upon it; for if it be irrevocably determined that it is to live, it will grow though no food should be given to it. You see that such a doctrine cannot be maintained: predestination is but a word without meaning. The Turks themselves, those patrons of fatalism, are not convinced of the doctrine, or medicine would not exist in Turkey; and a man residing in a third floor would not take the trouble to go down by the longer way of the stairs, he would immediately throw himself out of the window: you see to what a string of absurdities that will lead.”
At about three o’clock, the Emperor was told that the Governor wished to communicate to him some instructions which he had just received from London. The Emperor replied that he was unwell, that the instructions might be sent to him, or communicated to some of his suite; but the Governor insisted on being admitted, saying, that he wished to communicate directly with the Emperor: he added that he had also a few words to say to us in private, after having spoken to the General. The Emperor again refused; upon which the Governor retired, saying that he begged he might be informed when he could see the General. This period may be distant indeed; the Emperor, with whom I was at that moment, having said to me that he was determined never to receive him again.
After dinner, the Emperor had Buffon and Valmont de Bomare brought to him. He looked at what these authors say respecting the diversities in the human species, the difference between a negro and a white; but he was not much satisfied with what he found in them on the subject. He retired early to his apartment: he was unwell.
2d. The Emperor having told me that he was determined to apply again to the study of English, and that I must oblige him every morning to take his lesson, I accordingly went to his apartment at about half-past twelve. I was not fortunate in the choice of the moment, for he was lying on his sofa asleep after his breakfast. I must have vexed him, and was very much vexed myself. However, he would not let me go away, and read a little English for about half an hour. He was not very well. He dressed. Having told him that we had finished what he had given us to do, he at first proposed to go to work on the chapters of the Campaign of Italy; but he afterwards altered his mind, and was busy the whole day on something else. At about five o’clock he attempted to walk out, but found the weather too cold. After dinner, he tried to read, but in vain; he could not go on: he felt tired, drowsy, indisposed, and withdrew almost immediately.
JURISPRUDENCE; THE CODE; MERLIN, &C.—MONUMENTS IN EGYPT.—PLAN OF AN EGYPTIAN TEMPLE IN PARIS.
3d. After breakfast, the Emperor took two or three turns in the garden. We were all with him. He spoke of the communications which the Governor had to make to us, and took a review of the different conjectures—some good, some bad—which each of us formed on the subject. The weather was tolerable; he ordered the calash, and we went round the wood. The heat and the heaviness of the atmosphere, though the sun was obscured, obliged him to go into the house again. He sat down and dictated to my son until five o’clock.
We again tried to take a few turns in the garden; but the air was cold and damp. He went in-doors again, and made me go to converse with him. He turned over an English book, and stopped at a part relating to jurisprudence, and the criminal codes of France and England, endeavouring to compare them. Every body knows how extremely well versed he is in our codes; but he has little knowledge of that of England, and, with the exception of some general points, I could not answer his questions. In the course of the conversation he said: Laws which in theory are a model of clearness become too often a chaos in their application; because men, with their passions, spoil every thing they touch, &c.... Men can only avoid being exposed to the arbitrary acts of the judge, by submitting to the despotism of the law, &c.... I had at first fancied it would be possible to reduce all laws to simple geometrical demonstrations; so that every man who could read, and connect two ideas together, would be able to decide for himself; but I became convinced, almost immediately that this idea was absurd. However,” added he, “I should have wished to start from some fixed point, and follow one road known to all; to have no other laws but those inserted in the code; and to proclaim, once for all, that all laws which were not in the code were null and void. But it is not easy to obtain simplicity from practical lawyers: they first prove to you that simplicity is impossible, that it is a mere chimera; and endeavour next to demonstrate that it is incompatible with the stability and the existence of power. Power, they say, is exposed alone to the unforeseen machinations of all: it must therefore have, in the moment of need, arms kept in reserve for such cases: so that, with some old edicts of Chilperic or Pharamond, ferreted out for the occasion,” said Napoleon, “nobody can say that he is secure from being hanged in due form and according to law.
“So long as the subjects of discussion in the Council of State,” said the Emperor, “were referable to the code, I felt very strong; but when they diverged from it, I was quite in the dark, and Merlin was then my resource—he was my light. Without possessing much brilliancy, Merlin is very learned, wise, upright, and honest; one of the veterans of the good old cause: he was very much attached to me.
“No sooner had the code made its appearance, than it was almost immediately followed by commentaries, explanations, elucidations, interpretations, and the Lord knows what besides. I usually exclaimed, on seeing this: Gentlemen, we have cleaned the stable of Augeas; for God’s sake do not let us fill it again!” &c.
During dinner, the Emperor made some very remarkable observations respecting Egypt, which will be found in the chapters dictated to Bertrand. He then reverted to his expedition to Syria, and declared that the grand object of the expedition to Egypt was to shake the power of England in the four quarters of the world, by effecting a revolution capable of changing the whole face of the East, and giving a new destiny to India. Egypt, he said, was to stand us in stead of St. Domingo, and our American Colonies, to reconcile the liberty of the blacks with the prosperity of our commerce. This new colony would have ruined the English in America, in the Mediterranean, and even on the banks of the Ganges.
Then, answering the reproach preferred against him of having deserted his army, he said: “I merely obeyed the call of France, which summoned me to save her, and I had a right to do so. I had received from the Directory a carte blanche for all my operations in the basin of the Mediterranean, in Africa, and in Asia. I had full powers for treating with the Russians, the Turks, the Barbary States, and the provinces of India. I was at liberty to appoint a successor, to bring back the army, or to return myself, if I thought proper.”
The Emperor thought that all he had seen in Egypt, and, particularly, all those celebrated ruins so much talked of, were not to be compared with Paris and the Tuileries. The only difference between Egypt and us was, in his opinion, that Egypt, thanks to the pureness of its air and the nature of its materials, preserved her ruins for ever; whereas the nature of our European atmosphere would not admit of our having any for any length of time, every thing being soon corroded and gone.
Vestiges of a thousand years’ date might be found on the banks of the Nile; but not one would subsist on the banks of the Seine in fifty years. He, however, regretted very much that he had not caused an Egyptian temple to be erected at Paris: he could have wished to adorn the capital with such a monument, &c.
RESOURCES DURING THE EMIGRATION: ANECDOTES, &C.—OFFICIAL
COMMUNICATIONS.—NEW OFFENCES.
4th. At about twelve o’clock, I went to the Emperor’s apartment. He took a good lesson of English in Telemachus: he resolved to take up my method again; he approves of it, he said, and derives great benefit from it. He observed that he thought I had excellent dispositions for being a very good schoolmaster; I told him it was the fruit of my experience. He then made me enter into a great many details respecting the time when I gave lessons in London, during my emigration, and he was very much amused by them. “However,” said he, “you gentlemen, must have done credit to the profession, if not by your learning, at least, by your manners.” I then told him that one of our Princes had taught mathematics during his emigration. “And this alone,” said he, with animation, “would make a man of him, and shew him to have possessed some merit; that is assuredly one of the greatest triumphs of Madame de Genlis.”
I then related to him the following curious anecdote, which I had heard on that subject. “The Prince was in Switzerland: and, being so circumstanced as to find it advisable to conceal his existence, he wished to take a name that might favour his disguise. One of our Bishops, from the South of France, fancied that nothing could be better than to give him the name of a young man from Languedoc then at Nismes, who was a very zealous Protestant; which was just as it ought to be, the Prince being in a Protestant canton. The Bishop added that there was no appearance that the young man would ever be in the way to falsify the Prince’s assumption of his name. But it had so happened that the young man had gone into the army, and had become an aide-de-camp to M. de Montesquiou, and that shortly afterwards he had emigrated precisely into Switzerland with his general. What was his surprise to find himself at the table d’hôte, at dinner with a person of his own name, of the same religion, and who belonged to the same town! It was exactly like the scene of the two Sosias.[[31]] But the best of the joke was that the young man had also changed his name, and carefully concealed his own. Such incidents are only to be met with in novels; they are thought of impossible occurrence. Perhaps the present story has been rather embellished; yet, I think, I can affirm that I heard it from the young man himself.”
“But,” observed the Emperor afterwards, “those amongst you emigrants who had created for yourselves resources abroad must have felt quite lost when you returned to France, and ruined once more?”—“Certainly, Sire; for we found nothing of what we had formerly left in France, and we had just abandoned the little we had made ourselves. But we had not calculated: our impatience to revisit our native land had over-balanced every other consideration, and several amongst us soon found themselves in the greatest distress, in want of every thing, although acquainted and even intimate with many of the great personages of the day—with your Ministers, Sire, your Councillors of State, and others. This circumstance gave rise to a bon mot from one of our wits. Meeting one day, in the saloon of the Minister for Maritime Affairs, a friend who like himself hardly knew how to manage to subsist, he exclaimed, by way of consolation: “Well, my friend, if we die of hunger, we may still have two or three Ministers at our funeral.” The Emperor laughed heartily at the jest, and admitted that it gave an exact description of the situation of affairs at the time.
After his lesson of English, and the conversation which followed, the Emperor went out for a walk. We walked to the end of the wood, where the calash drove up to us.
On the Emperor’s return, the Doctor came to inform him that Colonel Reade, whom he had consented to receive instead of the Governor, wished to be presented to him. Colonel Reade delivered to the Emperor a note of considerable length; and I was sent for to translate it. It contained the communications which Sir Hudson Lowe had for three or four days past been vainly endeavouring to make in person. The note was couched in the most offensive terms, and the Governor wished to have reserved to himself the satisfaction of communicating its contents to the Emperor. This is a characteristic trait, and it requires no comment. The harsh terms in which it was expressed, and in particular the repeated threat that we should be separated from the Emperor, vexed us exceedingly, and put us out of spirits for the remainder of the day.