"SAINT-HELENA, 27 May 1821
"MONSIEUR LE BARON,—He is no more! A disease which, according to the opinion current in his family, was hereditary, carried him to the grave on the 5th of this month: tumour and cancer of the stomach near the pylorus. On opening the body, with the consent of the persons of his entourage, they discovered an ulcer close to the pylorus which caused adherence to the liver; and, on opening the stomach, they could trace the progress of the disease. The interior of the stomach was almost entirely a mass of cancerous disease, or of scirrhous portions advancing the cancer. His father died of the same disease at the age of thirty-six; it should have struck him down when he was on the throne of France at the hour fixed by fate, according to his own way of thinking on the subject. He was not confined to his room until 17 March; but a change had been noticeable in him since last November, an unusual pallor and a peculiar way of walking. He, however, took exercise twice a day, generally in a little carriage; but his paleness and weakness seemed always to persist.
"He was offered the advice of English doctors, but he would not receive any visit from them until 1 April, the month before his death. It was Professor Antomarchi who attended him before this period and continued to do so to his decease: it was he, too, who opened the body in the presence of nearly every doctor on the island. Dr. Arnott, of the 20th Regiment, a very clever and experienced man, was called in to see him on 1 April, and continued to attend him to the last. He has notified his gratitude to him by bequeathing him a gold snuff-box, the last he used, on which he engraved with his own hand the letter N. He has also left him a sum of money (five hundred pounds).
"Comte Montholon is the principal depositary of his last wishes; Comte Bertrand only came second.
"He had strongly urged Comte Bertrand to do his utmost to make peace with me, saving always his sense of honour: I was not even told of this. He made advances, and, as I have no rancour in my disposition (as far as a person can judge of himself), I did not repulse them.
"It was, however, all along more on account of the pretensions of the great marshal and his wounded pride, rather than those of the emperor, that caused matters to go wrong here from the very first; and from information received, it is evident that towards the end the emperor began to see this.
"There is a codicil to his will by which all the effects here are left to Comtes Bertrand and Montholon and to Marchand. Montholon is the principal executor. They knew nothing, or they said they knew nothing, of the will.
"In view of the time you spent here, I am induced to think that these few details will be specially interesting to you, and I will not make excuses for intruding them upon you. Give my compliments and those of Lady Lowe to Madame la baronne de Sturmer, and, believe me always, Your faithful and obedient Servant,
"H. LOWE, M.P.""P.S.—Bonaparte had himself guessed the cause of his illness. Some time before his death, he desired that his body should be opened, in order, as he told Bertrand and Montholon, to discover if there were any means of saving his son from the malady.
"Excuse my scrawl.
"H. L."
Do you notice that, in no part of the letter is the name of the dead man used? It is only in the postscript that it falls from the pen of the herald of death.
Was it not because the gaoler was ashamed to pronounce the name of his captive; the executioner felt remorse in pronouncing the name of the sufferer? When Napoleon was dead the whole world turned its attention, which had been divided between Schönbrünn and Saint-Helena, solely towards Schönbrünn.
[CHAPTER V]
Prince Metternich is appointed to teach the history of Napoleon to the Duc de Reichstadt—The duke's plan of political conduct—The poet Barthélemy at Vienna—His interviews with Count Dietrichstein—Opinion of the Duc de Reichstadt on the poem Napoléon en Égypte
"Prince Metternich," says M. de Montbel, "was expressly charged to teach the Duc de Reichstadt the exact and complete history of Napoleon." What irony! To charge the man who signed the instructions of M. de Sturmer, the representative of Austria Saint-Helena, to teach the son the exact and complete story of the father whose name the son no longer bore, whose title and arms he no longer carried!
Poor prisoner! Could they but have added this torture to thy agony by saying to thee, "Thy son only knows thee through the appreciation and according to the narrative of M. de Metternich!"