RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF NAPOLEON.—BISHOP OF NANTES (DE VOISINS).—THE POPE.—LIBERTIES OF THE GALLICAN CHURCH.—ANECDOTES.—CONCORDAT OF FONTAINEBLEAU.
17th.—While the Emperor was at breakfast in the tent, two persons described the excesses which they had witnessed in the army, and which had not come to his knowledge. They noticed the numerous violations of his orders, the violent abuses of authority, and other outrages. The Emperor listened; but some were so shocking that he could not, he said, give credit to them, and observed: “Come, gentlemen, these are libels.”
The wind was very violent; it blew a storm, with occasional showers. The wet obliged the Emperor to go in again.
After dinner Zaire and the beautiful scenes of Œdipe were read, among which he particularly pointed out that of the discovery, which he pronounced the finest and the most finished of the drama.
In speaking of priests and religion, the conversation led the Emperor to say: “Man, entering into life, asks himself: Whence do I come? What am I? Whither am I to go? These are so many mysterious questions, which urge us on to religion. We eagerly embrace it; we are attracted by our natural propensity; but as we advance in knowledge our course is stopped. Instruction and history are the great enemies of religion, deformed by human imperfection. Why, we ask ourselves, is the religion of Paris neither that of London nor of Berlin? Why is that of Petersburgh different from that of Constantinople? Why is the latter different from that of Persia, of the Ganges, and of China? Why is the religion of ancient times different from that of our days? Then reason is sadly staggered; it exclaims, O religions, religions! the children of man!... We very properly believe in God, because every thing around us proclaims him, and the most enlightened minds have believed in him; not only Bossuet, whose profession it was, but also Newton and Leibnitz, who had nothing to do with it. But we know not what to think of the doctrine that is taught us, and we find ourselves like the watch which goes, without knowing the watchmaker that made it. And observe a little the stupidity of those who educate us; they should keep away from us the idea of paganism and idolatry; because their absurdity excites the first exercise of our reason, and prepares us for a resistance to passive belief; and they bring us up, nevertheless, in the midst of the Greeks and Romans, with their myriads of divinities. Such, for my own part, has literally been the progress of my understanding. I felt the necessity of belief; I did believe, but my belief was shocked and undecided, the moment I acquired knowledge and began to reason; and that happened to me at so early an age as thirteen. Perhaps, I shall again believe implicitly; God grant I may! I shall certainly make no resistance, and I do not ask a greater blessing; it must, in my mind, be a great and real happiness.
“In violent agitations, however, and in the casual suggestions of immorality itself, the absence of that religious faith has never, I assert, influenced me in any respect, and I never doubted the existence of God; for, if my reason was inadequate to comprehend it, my mind was not the less disposed to adopt it. My nerves were in sympathy with that sentiment.
“When I seized on the helm of affairs, I had already fixed ideas of all the primary elements by which society is bound together; I had weighed all the importance of religion; I was convinced, and I determined to re-establish it. But the resistance I had to overcome in restoring Catholicism would scarcely be credited. I should have been more willingly followed had I hoisted the standard of Protestantism. This reluctance was carried so far that in the Council of State, where I found great difficulty in getting the Concordat adopted, several yielded only by forming a plan to extricate themselves from it. ‘Well!’ they said to one another, ‘let us turn Protestants, and that will not affect us.’ It is unquestionable that, in the disorder which I succeeded, upon which I found myself I was at liberty to choose between Catholicism and Protestantism; and it may also be said, with truth, that the general disposition, at the moment, was quite in favour of the latter: but, besides my real adherence to the religion in which I was born, I had the most important motives to influence my decision. What should I have gained by proclaiming Protestantism? I should have created two great parties, very nearly equal, in France, when I wished for the existence of none at all; I should have revived the fury of religious disputes, when their total annihilation was called for by the light of the age and my own feelings. These two parties would, by their mutual distractions, have destroyed France, and rendered her the slave of Europe, when I had the ambition to make her the mistress of it. By the help of Catholicism I attained much more effectually all the grand results that I had in view. In the interior, at home, the smaller number was swallowed up by the greater, and I relied upon my treating the former with such an equality that there would be shortly no motive for marking the difference. Abroad, the Pope was bound to me by Catholicism; and, with my influence, and our forces in Italy, I did not despair, sooner or later, by some means or other, of obtaining for myself the direction of that Pope, and from that time, what an influence! What a lever of opinion on the rest of the world!” &c. He concluded with saying; “Francis I. was really in a state to adopt Protestantism, at its birth, and to declare himself the head of it in Europe. Charles V., his rival, was the zealous champion of Rome, because he considered that measure as an additional means to assist him in his project of enslaving Europe. Was not that circumstance alone sufficient to point out to Francis the necessity of taking care of his independence; but he abandoned the greater to run after the lesser advantage. He persevered in pursuing his imprudent designs on Italy, and, with the intention of paying court to the Pope, he burnt Protestants at Paris.
“Had Francis I. embraced Lutheranism, which is favourable to royal supremacy, he would have preserved France from the dreadful religious convulsions brought on, at later periods, by the Calvinists, whose efforts, altogether republican, were on the point of subverting the throne and dissolving our noble monarchy. Unfortunately, Francis I. was ignorant of all that; for he could not allege his scruples for an excuse, he, who entered into an alliance with the Turks, and brought them into the midst of us. It was precisely because he was incapable of extending his views so far. The folly of the time! The extent of feudal intellect! Francis I. was, after all, but a hero for tilts and tournaments, and a gallant for the drawing-room, one of those pigmy great men.
“The Bishop of Nantes (De Voisins), said the Emperor, made me a real Catholic by the efficacy of his arguments, by the excellence of his morals, and by his enlightened toleration. Marie Louise, whose confessor he was, consulted him once on the obligation of abstaining from meat on Fridays.—‘At what table do you dine?’ asked the Bishop.—‘At the Emperor’s.’ ‘Do you give all the orders there?’—‘No.’ ‘You cannot, then make any alteration in it; would he do it himself?’—‘I am inclined to think not.’ ‘Be obedient then, and do not provoke a subject for scandal. Your first duty is to obey, and make him respected; you will not be in want of other means to amend your life, and to suffer privations in the eyes of God.’
“He also behaved in the same way with respect to a public communion, which some persons put into Marie Louise’s head to celebrate on Easter-day. She would not, however, consent, without the advice of her prudent confessor, who dissuaded her from it by similar arguments. What a difference, said the Emperor, had she been worked upon by a fanatic! What quarrels, what disagreements might he not have caused between us! What mischief might he not have done, in the circumstances in which I was placed!”
The Emperor remarked to us, “that the bishop of Nantes had lived with Diderot, in the midst of unbelievers, and had uniformly conducted himself with consistency; he was ready with an answer to every one; and, above all, he had the good sense to abandon every thing that was not maintainable, and to strip religion of every thing which he was not capable of defending.—He was asked, ‘has not an animal, which moves, combines, and thinks, a soul?’ ‘Why not,’ was his answer. ‘But whither does it go? For it is not equal to ours.’ ‘What is that to you? It dwells, perhaps, in limbo.’ He used to retreat within the last intrenchments, even within the fortress itself, and there he reserved excellent means for defending himself. He argued better than the Pope, whom he often confounded. He was the firmest pillar, among our bishops, of the Gallican liberties. He was my oracle, my luminary; in religious matters, he possessed my unbounded confidence. For, in my quarrels with the Pope, it was my first care, whatever intriguers and marplots in cassocs may say, not to touch upon any dogmatic point: I was so steady in this conduct, that the instant this good and venerable bishop of Nantes said to me, ‘Take care, there you are grappling with a dogma,’ I immediately turned off from the course I was pursuing, to return to it by other ways, without amusing myself by entering into dissertations with him, or by seeking even to comprehend his meaning; and, as I had not let him into my secret, how amazed must he not have been at the circuits I made! How whimsical, obstinate, capricious, and incoherent, must I not have appeared to him! It was because I had an object in view, and he was unacquainted with it.
“The Popes could not forgive us our liberties of the Gallican church. The four famous propositions of Bossuet, in particular, provoked their resentment. It was, in their opinion, a real hostile manifesto, and they accordingly considered us at least as much out of the pale of the church as the Protestants. They thought us as guilty as they, perhaps more so, and if they did not overwhelm us with their ostensible thunderbolts, it was because they dreaded the consequences—our separation. The example of England was before them. They did not wish to cut off their right arm with their own hand, but they were constantly on the watch for a favourable opportunity; they trusted to time for it. They are, no doubt, ready to believe, that it has now arrived. They will, however, be again disappointed by the light of the age and the manners of the times.
“Some time before my coronation,” said the Emperor, “the Pope wished to see me, and made it a point to visit me himself. He had made many concessions. He had come to Paris for the purpose of crowning me; he consented not to place the crown on my head himself; he dispensed with the ceremony of the public communion; he had, therefore, in his opinion, many compensations to expect in return. He had accordingly at first dreamt of Romagna and the Legations, and he began to suspect that he should be obliged to give up all that. He then lowered his pretensions to a very trifling favour, as he called it, my signature to an ancient document, a worn-out rag, which he held from Louis XIV. ‘Do me that favour, said he, in fact, it signifies nothing.’ ‘Cheerfully, most holy father, and the thing is done, if it be feasible.’”[feasible.’”] It was, however, a declaration, in which Louis XIV. at the close of his life, seduced by Madame de Maintenon, or prevailed upon by his confessors, expressed his disapprobation of the celebrated articles of 1682, the foundations of the liberties of the Gallican church. The Emperor shrewdly replied, that he had not, for his own part, any personal objection, but that it was requisite for him, as a matter of form, to speak to the bishops about it; on which the Pope repeatedly observed, that such a communication was by no means necessary, and that the thing did not deserve to make so much noise. “‘I[“‘I] shall never,’ he remarked, ‘shew the signature, it shall be kept as secret as that of Louis XIV.’ ‘But, if it signifies nothing,’ said Napoleon, ‘what use is there for my signature? And if any signification can be drawn from it, I am bound by a sense of propriety to consult my doctors.’”
With the view, however, of avoiding the imputation of a constant refusal of every request, the Emperor wished to seem rather inclined to grant the favour. “The Bishop of Nantes and the other bishops, who were really French, came to me in great haste. They were furious, and watched me,” said the Emperor, “as they would have watched Louis XIV. on his death-bed, to prevent him from turning Protestant. The Sulpicians were called in; they were Jesuits au petit pied, they strove to find out my intention, and were ready to do whatever I wished.”[wished.”] The Emperor concluded with observing;—“The Pope had dispensed with the public communion in my favour, and it is from his determination in that respect that I form my opinion of the sincerity of his religious belief. He had held a congregation of cardinals for the purpose of settling the ceremonial. The greater number warmly insisted upon my taking the communion in public, asserting the great influence of the example on the people, and the necessity of my holding it out. The Pope, on the contrary, fearful lest I should fulfil that duty as if I were going through one of the articles of M. de Ségur’s programme, looked upon it as a sacrilege, and was inflexible in opposing it. ‘Napoleon,’ he observed, ‘is not perhaps a believer; the time will, no doubt, come, in which his faith will be established, and in the mean time, let us not burthen his conscience or our own.’
“In his Christian charity, for he really is a worthy, mild, and excellent man, he never once despaired of seeing me a penitent, at his tribunal; he has often let his hopes and thoughts on that subject escape him. We sometimes conversed about it in a pleasant and friendly manner. ‘It will happen to you, sooner or later,’ said he, with an innocent tenderness of expression; ‘you will be converted by me or by others, and you will then feel how great the content, the satisfaction of your own heart,’ &c. In the mean time, my influence over him was such, that I drew from him, by the mere power of my conversation, that famous Concordat of Fontainebleau, in which he renounced the temporal sovereignty, an act on account of which he has since shown that he dreaded the judgment of posterity, or rather the reprobation of his successors. No sooner had he signed than he felt the stings of repentance. He was to have dined the following day with me in public; but at night, he was, or pretended to be ill. The truth is that, immediately after I left him, he again fell into the hands of his habitual advisers, who drew a terrible picture of the error which he had committed. Had we been left by ourselves, I might have done what I pleased with him; I should have governed the religious with the same facility that I did the political world. He was, in truth, a lamb, a good man in every respect, a man of real worth, whom I esteem and love greatly, and who, on his part, is, I am convinced, not altogether destitute of interest with regard to me. You will not see him make any severe complaints against me, nor prefer, in particular, any direct and personal accusation against me, any more than the other sovereigns. There may, perhaps, be some vague and vulgar declamations against ambition and bad faith, but nothing positive and direct; because statesmen are well aware, that when the hour of libels is past, no one would be allowed to prefer a public accusation without corroborative proofs, and they have none of these to produce: such will be the province of history. On the other hand, there will be at most but some wretched chroniclers, shallow enough to take the ravings of clubs, or intrigues, for authentic facts, or some writers of memoirs, who, deceived by the errors of the moment, will be dead before they are enabled to correct their mistakes.
“When the real particulars of my disputes with the Pope shall be made public, the world will be surprised at the extent of my patience, for it is known that I could not put up with a great deal. When he left me, after my coronation, he felt a secret spite at not having obtained the compensations which he thought he had deserved. But, however grateful I might have been in other respects, I could not, after all, make a traffic of the interests of the empire by way of paying my own obligations, and, I was, besides, too proud to seem to have purchased his kindnesses. He had hardly set his foot on the soil of Italy, when the intriguers and mischief-makers, the enemies of France, took advantage of the disposition he was in, to govern his conduct, and from that instant every thing was hostile on his part. He no longer was the gentle, the peaceable Chiaramonti, that worthy bishop of Imola, who had at so early a period shown himself worthy of the enlightened state of the age. His signature was thenceforth affixed to acts only which characterised the Gregories and Bonifaces more than him. Rome became the focus of all the plots hatched against us. I strove in vain to bring him back by the force of reason, but I found it impossible to ascertain his sentiments. The wrongs became so serious, and the insults offered to us so flagrant, that I was imperatively called upon to act, in my turn. I, therefore, seized his fortresses; I took possession of some provinces; and I finished by occupying Rome itself, at the same time declaring and strictly observing that I held him sacred in his spiritual capacity, which was far from being satisfactory to him. A crisis, however, presented itself; it was believed, that fortune had abandoned me at Essling, and measures were in immediate readiness for exciting the population of that great capital to insurrection. The officer, who commanded there, thought that he could escape the danger only by getting rid of the Pope, whom he sent off to France. That measure was carried into effect without my orders, and was even in direct opposition to my views. I despatched instant orders for stopping the Pope, wherever he might be met with, and he was kept at Savona, where he was treated with every possible care and attention; for I wished to make myself feared, but not to ill-treat him; to bend him to my views, not to degrade him;—I entertained very different projects! This removal served only to inflame the spirit of resentment and intrigue. Until then, the quarrel had been but temporal; the Pope’s advisers, in the hope of re-establishing their affairs, involved it in all the jumble of spirituality. I then found it necessary to carry on the contest with him on that head; I had my council of conscience, my ecclesiastical councils, and I invested my imperial courts with the power of deciding in cases of appeal from abuses; for my soldiers could be of no further use in all this: I felt it necessary to fight the Pope with his own weapons. To his men of erudition, to his sophists, his civilians, and his scribes, it was incumbent upon me to oppose mine.
“An English plot was laid to carry him off from Savona; it was of service to me, I caused him to be removed to Fontainebleau; but that was to be the period of his sufferings, and the regeneration of his splendour. All my grand views were accomplished in disguise and mystery. I had brought things to such a point, as to render the development infallible, without any exertion, and in a way altogether natural. It was accordingly consecrated by the Pope in the famous Concordat of Fontainebleau, in spite even of my disasters at Moscow. What then would have been the result, had I returned victorious and triumphant? I had consequently obtained the separation, which was so desirable, of the spiritual from the temporal, which is so injurious to his Holiness, and the commixture of which produces disorder in society, in the name and by the hands of him who ought himself to be the centre of harmony: and from that time I intended to exalt the Pope beyond measure, to surround him with grandeur and honours. I should have succeeded in suppressing all his anxiety for the loss of his temporal power; I should have made an idol of him; he would have remained near my person. Paris would have become the capital of the Christian world, and I should have governed the religious as well as the political world. It was an additional means of binding tighter all the federative parts of the empire, and of preserving the tranquillity of every thing placed without it. I should have had my religious as well as my legislative sessions; my councils would have constituted the representation of Christendom, and the Popes would have been only the presidents. I should have called together and dissolved those assemblies, approved and published their discussions, as Constantine and Charlemagne had done; and if that supremacy had escaped the Emperors, it was because they had committed the blunder of letting the spiritual heads reside at a distance from them; and the latter took advantage of the weakness of the princes, or of critical events, to shake off their dependence and to enslave them in their turn.
“But,” resumed the Emperor, “to accomplish that object, I had found it requisite to manœuvre with a great deal of dexterity; above all, to conceal my real way of thinking, to give a direction, altogether different to general opinion, and to feed the public with vulgar trifles for the purpose of more effectually concealing the importance and depth of my secret design. I accordingly experienced a kind of satisfaction on finding myself accused of barbarity towards the Pope, and of tyranny in religious matters. Foreigners, in particular, promoted my wishes in this respect, by filling their wretched libels with invectives against my pitiful ambition, which, according to them, had driven me to devour the miserable patrimony of Saint Peter. But I was perfectly aware, that public opinion would again declare itself in my favour at home, and that no means could exist abroad for disconcerting my plan. What measures would not have been employed for its prevention, had it been anticipated at a seasonable period; for how vast its future ascendency over all the Catholic countries, and how great its influence even upon those that are not so, by the co-operation of the members of that religion who are spread throughout these countries!”
The Emperor said, that this deliverance from the Court of Rome, this legal union, the control of religion in the hands of the sovereign, had been, for a long time, the constant object of his meditations and his wishes. England, Russia, the northern crowns, and part of Germany, are, he said, in possession of it. Venice and Naples had enjoyed it. No government can be carried on without it; a nation is otherwise, every instant, affected in its tranquillity, its dignity, its independence. But the task,” he added, “was very difficult; at every step I was alive to the danger. I was induced to think, that, once engaged in it, I should be abandoned by the nation. I more than once sounded and strove to elicit public opinion, but in vain, and I have been enabled to convince myself that I never should have had the national co-operation. And this explains a sally, which I had witnessed.”
The Emperor perceiving, at one of those grand Sunday audiences, which were very numerously attended, the Archbishop of Tours (de Barral) addressed him in a very elevated tone; “Well! Monsieur l’Archevêque, how do our affairs with the Pope go on?—‘Sire, the deputation of your bishops is about to set out for Savona.’ Very well! endeavour to make the Pope listen to reason; prevail upon him to conduct himself with prudence; otherwise, the consequences will be unpleasant. Tell him plainly, that he is no longer in the times of the Gregories, and that I am not a Débonnaire. He has the example of Henry the VIIIth., and, without his wickedness, I possess more strength and power than he had. Let him know, that whatever part I may take, I have 600,000 Frenchmen in arms, who, in every contingency will march with me, for me, and as myself. The peasantry and mechanics look to me alone, and repose unlimited confidence in me. The prudent and enlightened part of the intermediate class, those who take care of their interest, and wish for tranquillity, will follow me; the only class favourable to him will be the meddling and talkative, who, will forget him at the end of ten days, to chat upon some fresh subject.”
And as the archbishop, who betrayed his embarrassment by his countenance, was about to stammer out some words, the Emperor added in a greatly softened tone: “You are out of all this; I participate in your doctrines; I honour your piety; I respect your character!”
The Emperor, I now understand him perfectly, had, no doubt, merely thrown out those observations, in order that we might give effect to them in other places; but he deceived himself with respect to our dispositions, or at least to those of the palace. Some, the least reflecting part, were decided and loud in censuring his conduct on these occasions; others, with the best intentions, were extremely cautious not to let a word transpire, lest it should prove injurious to him in the public opinion; for, such was, in general, our misconception, our singular manner of understanding and explaining the Emperor’s meaning, that, although without any bad design, and solely through levity, incoherency, or for fashion’s sake, instead of making him popular, we were perhaps the very persons who did him most injury. I very well remember that, on the morning when that famous concordat of Fontainebleau unexpectedly appeared in the Moniteur, some persons confidentially assured each other in the saloons of St. Cloud, that nothing was less authentic than that document, and that it was a base fabrication. Others whispered, that it was, no doubt, genuine in the main points, but that it had been extracted from the Pope by the Emperor’s anger and violence. To that I should not be surprised, if the piquant dramatic episode of Napoleon, at Fontainebleau, dragging the father of the faithful by his white hair, was not precisely the invention of the political proser who wrote it, but caught up from the mouths of the courtiers and even of the Emperor’s servants themselves; and this is the way in which history is written!
WARM CONVERSATION WITH THE GOVERNOR, IN THE
ADMIRAL’S PRESENCE.
18th. The weather was most dreadful during the whole of the night and day. About three o’clock, the Emperor took advantage of its clearing up a little and went out. He came to my apartment, and we called on General Gourgaud, who was indisposed. We then visited Madame de Montholon, who accompanied us to the garden. The Emperor was in excellent spirits, which enlivened the conversation. He undertook to persuade Madame de Montholon to make a general confession, particularly insisting upon her setting out with her first sin. “Come,” said he, “speak out without apprehension, do not let our neighbour constrain you; consider him merely as your confessor; we shall forget it all in a quarter of an hour.”
And I really believe he would have succeeded in persuading her, when the Governor unfortunately came to interrupt so pleasant a scene; he made his appearance, and the Emperor to avoid receiving him, hastily took shelter in the bottom of the wood. We were joined in a few moments by M. de Montholon, who acquainted the Emperor that the Governor and the Admiral earnestly requested the honour of speaking with him. He thought that some communication was to be made on their part, and returned to the garden, where he received them.
We remained behind, with the Governor’s officers. The conversation soon became animated on the part of the Emperor, who, as he walked between the Governor and the Admiral, almost uniformly addressed himself to the latter, even when he spoke to the former. We continued at too great a distance to hear any thing distinctly; but I have since learned, that he again repeated, and with, perhaps, more energy and warmth, all that he said to him in the preceding conversations.
In consequence of the favourable explanations, which the Admiral, who acted the part of mediator, laboured to give of the Governor’s intentions, the Emperor observed: “The faults of M. Lowe proceed from his habits of life. He has never had the command of any but foreign deserters, of Piedmontese, Corsicans, and Sicilians, all renegadoes, and traitors to their country; the dregs and scum of Europe. If he had commanded Englishmen; if he were one himself, he would shew respect to those who have a right to be honoured.” At another time, the Emperor declared, that there was a moral courage, as necessary as courage on the field of battle; that M. Lowe did not exercise it here with regard to us, in dreaming only of our escape, instead of employing the only real, prudent, reasonable, and sensible means for preventing it. The Emperor also told him that, although his body was in the hands of evil-minded men, his soul was as lofty and independent as when at the head of 400,000 men, or on the throne, when he disposed of kingdoms.
To the article respecting the reduction of our expenses, and the money which was required of the Emperor, he answered: “All those details are very painful to me; they are mean. You might place me on the burning pile of Montezuma or Guatimozin without extracting from me gold, which I do not possess. Besides, who asks you for any thing? Who entreats you to feed me? When you discontinue your supply of provisions, those brave soldiers, whom you see there,” pointing, with his hand, to the camp of the 53d, “will take pity on me; I shall place myself at the grenadiers’ table, and they will not, I am confident, drive away the first, the oldest soldier of Europe.”
The Emperor having reproached the Governor with having kept some books, which were addressed to him, he answered, that he had done so in consequence of their having been sent under the address of Emperor. “And who,” replied the Emperor, with emotion, “gave you the right of disputing that title? In a few years, your Lord Castlereagh, your Lord Bathurst, and all the others—you, who speak to me—will be buried in the dust of oblivion, or if your names be remembered, it will be only on account of the indignity with which you have treated me, while the Emperor Napoleon shall, doubtless, continue for ever the subject, the ornament of history, and the star of civilized nations. Your libels are of no avail against me; you have expended millions on them; what have they produced? Truth pierces through the clouds, it shines like the sun, and like it, is imperishable.”
The Emperor admitted that he had, during this conversation, seriously and repeatedly offended Sir Hudson Lowe; and he also did him the justice to acknowledge, that Sir Hudson Lowe had not precisely shewn, in a single instance, any want of respect; he had contented himself with muttering, between his teeth, sentences which were not audible. He once said that he had solicited his recal, and the Emperor observed, that that was the most agreeable word he could possibly have said. He also said, that we endeavoured to blacken his character in Europe, but that our conduct, in that respect, was a matter of indifference to him. The only disrespect, perhaps, said the Emperor, on the part of the Governor, and which was trifling, compared with the treatment he had received, was the abrupt way in which he retired, while the Admiral withdrew slowly, and with numerous salutes. “The Admiral was precisely then,” observed the Emperor, in a gay tone of voice, “what the Marquis de Gallo was at the time of my rupture of Passeriano.”—An allusion to one of the chapters of the Campaign in Italy, which he had dictated to me.
The Emperor remarked that, after all, he had to reproach himself with that scene. “I must see this officer no more; he makes me fly into a violent passion; it is beneath my dignity; expressions escape me which would have been unpardonable at the Tuileries; if they can at all be excused here, it is because I am in his hands and subject to his power.”
After dinner, the Emperor caused a letter to be read, in answer to the Governor, who had officially sent the treaty of the 2nd of August, by which the allied Sovereigns stipulated for the imprisonment of Napoleon. Sir Hudson Lowe, by the same conveyance, asked to introduce the foreign Commissioners to Longwood. The Emperor had, in the course of the day, dictated the letter to M. de Montholon. It was his wish, that every one of us should make his objections, and state his opinions. It seemed to us a master-piece of dignity, energy, and sound reasoning.
THE CONVERSATION WITH THE GOVERNOR AGAIN NOTICED, &C.—EFFECT OF THE LIBELS AGAINST NAPOLEON.—TREATY OF FONTAINEBLEAU.—THE WORK OF GENERAL S——N.
19th.—The weather continued as dreadful as we had ever seen it. It has been, for several days, like one of our equinoctial storms in Europe. The Emperor exposed himself to it, to come to my apartment about ten o’clock; in going out, he struck one of his legs against a nail near the door; his stocking was torn halfway down the leg; luckily the skin was only scratched. He was obliged to return to change. “You owe me a pair of stockings,” he said, while his valet de chambre was putting on another pair; “a polite man does not expose his visitors to such dangers in his apartments. You are lodged too much like a seaman; it is true, that is not your fault. I thought myself careless about these matters, but you actually surpass me.”—“Sire,”[“Sire,”] I answered, “my merit is not great, no choice is left me. I am truly a hog in its mire, I must confess; but as your Majesty says, it is not altogether my fault.”
We went into the garden, when it had cleared up for a moment. The Emperor reverted to the conversation which he had yesterday with the Governor, in the Admiral’s presence, and again reproached himself with the violence of his expressions. “It would have been more worthy of me, more consistent and more dignified, to have expressed all these things with perfect composure; they would, besides, have been more impressive.” He recollected, in particular, a name which had escaped him as applied to Sir H. Lowe (scribe d’etat-major,) which must have shocked him, and the more so because it expressed the truth, and that, we know, is always offensive. “I have myself,” said the Emperor, “experienced that feeling in the island of Elba. When I ran over the most infamous libels, they did not affect me even in the slightest manner. When I was told or read, that I had strangled, poisoned, ravished; that I had massacred my sick; that my carriage had been driven over my wounded; I laughed out of commiseration. How often did I not then say to Madame: ‘Make haste, mother, come and see the savage, the man-tiger, the devourer of the human race; come and admire your child!’ But when there was a slight approach to truth, the effect was no longer the same; I felt the necessity of defending myself; I accumulated reasons for my justification, and even then, it never happened, that I was left without some traces of a secret torment. My dear Las Cases, such is man!”
The Emperor passed from this subject to his protest against the treaty of the 2nd of August, which had been read to us after dinner. I presumed to ask him, whether after noticing in a conspicuous manner the acknowledgment of his title of Emperor by the English, during their negotiations at Paris and Chatillon, he had not forgotten that, which they must have made on occasion of the treaty of Fontainebleau, and which, it struck me, was omitted. “It was,” he quickly replied, “done on purpose; I have nothing to do with that treaty; I disclaim it; I am far from boasting of it, I am rather ashamed of it. It was discussed for me. I was betrayed by N——, who brought it to me. That epoch belongs to my history, but to my history on a large scale. If I had then determined to treat in a sensible manner, I should have obtained the kingdom of Italy, Tuscany, or Corsica,—all that I could have desired. My decision was the result of a fault inherent in my character, a caprice on my part, a real constitutional excess. I was seized with a dislike and contempt of every thing around me; I was affected with the same feeling for fortune, which I took delight in defying. I cast my eye on a spot of land, where I might be uncomfortable and take advantage of the mistakes that might be made. I fixed upon the island of Elba. It was the act of a soul of rock. I am, no doubt, my dear Las Cases, of a very singular disposition, but we should not be extraordinary, were we not of a peculiar mould; I am a piece of rock, launched into space! You will not, perhaps, easily believe me, but I do not regret my grandeur, you see me slightly affected by what I have lost.”
“And why, Sire,” I observed, “should I not believe you? What have you to regret?... The life of man is but an atom in the duration of history, but with regard to your majesty, the one is already so full, that you scarcely ought to take any interest but in the other; if your body suffers here, your memory is enriched a hundred-fold. Had it been your lot to end your days in the bosom of uninterrupted prosperity, how many grand and striking circumstances would have passed away unknown! You yourself, Sire, have assured me of this, and I have remained impressed with the force of that truth. Not a day, in fact, passes in which those, who were your enemies, do not repeat with us, who are your faithful servants, that you are unquestionably greater here than in the Tuileries. And even on this rock, to which you have been transferred by violence and perfidy, do you not still command? Your jailors, your masters, are at your feet; your soul captivates every one that comes near you; you shew yourself what history represents St. Louis in the chains of the Saracens, the real master of his conquerors. Your irresistible ascendancy accompanies you here. We, who are all about you, Sire, entertain this opinion of you; the Russian commissioner expressed the same sentiment, we are assured, the other day, and it is felt by those who guard you. What have you to regret?”
On our return the Emperor, in spite of the storm, ordered his breakfast in the tent, and kept me with him. The rain did not penetrate; the only inconvenience was a considerable degree of damp; but the squalls of wind and rain whirled round us, and vented themselves far before us, towards the bottom of the valley; the spectacle was not destitute of beauty.
The Emperor retired about two o’clock; he sent for me some time afterwards to his cabinet. “I have,” said he, laying down the book, just read General S——n; he is a madman, a hair-brained fellow, he writes nonsense. He is, however, after all, readable and amusing; he cuts up, dissects, judges, and pronounces sentence upon men and things. He does not hesitate to give advice, in several instances, to Wellington, and asserts, that he ought to have made some campaigns under Kleber, &c. Kleber was no doubt a great general, but the notice taken of Soult is not precisely the best part of the book; he is an excellent director, a good minister at war.
“This S——n,” he continued, “deserted from the camp at Boulogne, carrying all my secrets to the English; that might have been attended with serious consequences. S——n was a general officer; his conduct was dreadful and unpardonable. But observe how a man, in the moment of revolution, may be a bad character, impudent, and shameless. I found him, on my return from the island of Elba; he waited for me with confidence, and wrote a long letter in which he attempted to make me his dupe. The English, he said, were miserable creatures; he had been a long time among them; he was acquainted with their means and resources, and could be very useful to me. He knew that I was too magnanimous, too great, to remember the wrongs I had suffered from him. I ordered him to be arrested, and as he had been already tried and condemned, I am at a loss to know why he was not shot. Either there was not time to carry his sentence into effect, or he was forgotten. There can be no forbearance, no indulgence for the general, who has the infamy to prostitute himself to a foreign power.”
The Grand Marshal came in; the Emperor, after continuing the conversation for some time, took him away to play at chess. He suffered much from the badness of the weather.
After dinner, he read Le Tartuffe; but he was so fatigued, that he could not get through it. He laid down the book, and, after paying a just tribute of eulogy to Moliere, he concluded in a manner which we little expected. “The whole of the Tartuffe,” he remarked, “is, unquestionably, finished with the hand of a master, it is one of the best pieces of an inimitable writer. It is, however, marked with such a character, that I am not at all surprised, that its appearance should have been the subject of interesting negotiations at Versailles, and of a great deal of hesitation on the part of Louis XIV. If I have a right to be astonished at any thing, it is at his allowing it to be performed. In my opinion, it holds out devotion under such odious colours; a certain scene presents so decisive a situation, so completely indecent, that, for my own part, I do not hesitate to say, if the comedy had been written in my time, I would not have allowed it to be represented.”
THE BARONESS DE S——, &C.
20th.—About four o’clock, I attended the Emperor, according to his orders, in the billiard-room. The weather still continued dreadful; it did not allow him to set his foot out of doors, and he was, he said, nevertheless, driven from his apartment and the saloon by the smoke. My looks told him, he said, that I was quite flustered; it was with the most lively indignation, and he wished to know the cause of it.
“Two or three years ago,” said I, “a clerk in the war office, a very worthy man, as far as I know, used to come to my house to give my son lessons in writing and in Latin. He had a daughter, whom he wished to make a governess, and begged us to recommend her, should an occasion present itself. Madame Las Cases sent for her; she was charming, and in every respect highly attractive. From that moment, Madame Las Cases invited her occasionally to her house, with the view of introducing her into the world, and obtaining some acquaintances for her who might prove useful. But, how strange! this young person, our acquaintance, our obliged friend, is actually at this moment the Baroness de S——, the wife of one of the Commissioners of the allied powers, who arrived nearly a month since, in the island.
“Your Majesty may judge of my surprise, and of all my joy at this singular freak of fortune. I am then about to have, I said to myself, positive, particular, and even secret information respecting every thing that interests me. Several days passed without any communication, but without any anxiety, and even with some satisfaction on my part. For, I thought, the greater the caution, the more I had to expect. At length, hurried on by my impatience, I sent three or four days ago my servant to Madame de S——; I had described her very properly, and, as an inhabitant of the island, he found no difficulty in gaining admittance. He returned soon with an answer from Madame de S——, that she did not know the person who had sent him. I might, under every circumstance, be still induced to think, that this was an excess of prudence, and that she was unwilling to place confidence in one unknown to her. But this very day, I received notice from the governor, not to attempt to form any secret connexion in the island; that I ought to be aware of the danger to which I exposed myself; and that the attempt with which he reproached me was not a matter of doubt; for he was put in possession of it by the very person to whom I had addressed myself. Your Majesty now knows what has confounded me. To find that so villainous a charge should come from a quarter where I had a right to expect some interest in my affairs, and even gratitude, has irritated me beyond measure; I am no longer the same person.”
The Emperor laughed in my face: “How little do you know of the human heart! What! her father was your son’s tutor, or something of that kind; she enjoyed your wife’s protection when she was in want of it, and she is become a German baroness! But, my dear Las Cases, you are the person whom she dreads most here, who lay her most under constraint; she will allege that she never saw your wife at Paris, and besides, this mischievous Sir Hudson Lowe may have been delighted with giving an odious turn to the thing; he is so artful, so malignant.” And he then began to laugh at me and my anger.
After dinner, the Emperor resumed his reading of the Tartuffe, which he had not finished yesterday, and there was enough left for to-day. The Emperor was quite dejected; the bad weather has a visible effect upon him.