In contrast with members of the oligarchy, who threw all moral restraints to the winds, Napoleon towers above them. Take any grounds—administrative, strategical, religious, domestic—he was preeminent above his contemporaries. On religious grounds alone, those thoughts of his which have been recorded not only disclose the insight of a man of affairs, but reveal the thinking mind of a deeply religious being. His conversations with Gourgaud on religious subjects, some of which are quoted in Lord Rosebery's admirable book, "The Last Phase," are so contradictory that they cannot be taken as authentic beliefs. It greatly depended to whom he was talking as to the line he took.
It is evident that the Emperor took a delight in arguing with and contradicting the devout Catholic for sheer intellectual exercise. At one time he declares to his refractory companion, "If I had to choose a religion, I would worship the sun, because the sun gives to all things life and fertility." At another time he torments the Count, after tying him into a knot and exposing his superficial knowledge, by saying that "the Mohammedan religion is the finest of all." But when his mind seriously dwells on sacred things, he declares "that religion lends sanctity to everything." "The remission of sins is a beautiful idea." "It makes the Christian religion so attractive that it will never perish. No one can say 'I do not believe and I never shall believe.'"
Montholon is more to the writer's liking than Gourgaud, even though Gourgaud's authenticity is backed by Lord Rosebery, and we shall see later what he says about his Emperor's religious beliefs. It was he who endeavoured to mitigate his master's mental and physical sufferings, and it was he whom he desired should close his eyes in death when the nefarious assassination had been completed. It was he, too, who got himself locked up in the fortress of Ham for seven years by adhering steadfastly to the cause of the great exile's nephew. Gourgaud was loyal and devoted on a sort of sliding scale, which led him to do great injustice to the stricken hero. Montholon's devotion was consistent and abiding under all circumstances, while Gourgaud's fluctuated with his moods.
None of Napoleon's companions in exile were admitted to such close intimacy with the illustrious warrior-statesman as was Count Montholon, not even Bertrand or Marchand. It was he who had won confidence by the most amazing attachment that one human being could give to another, and it was natural that the big soul of Napoleon should respond to what amounted to fanatical fidelity. He was the beloved companion of the Emperor for six years, and during the last forty-two nights of his life he was with him in the death-chamber, and at his request he kept vigil and witnessed, his spirit pass away.
It was to him, when the shadow of death was hovering round the smitten rock, that Napoleon conveyed his most sacred thoughts, domestic, civil, and religious. He made him one of his executors, bequeathed to him a fortune, entrusted him with the custody of precious documents, and to his dying day the recipient of such flattering confidences never betrayed by word or act the faith that was reposed in him, nor did he ever falter in his devotion to the martyr's cause. It is from him we have handed down the famous constitution drawn up by Napoleon for his son, which is pregnant with democratic wisdom and flows with the genius of statesmanship. We get, too, a vivid knowledge of the religious side of Napoleon's versatile character. His talks and dictations on this controversial subject are unorthodox if you like, but nevertheless religious; copious in thought and trenchant in vocabulary, they disclose the magic of a well-stored inspired mind. He indulges in neither puerilities nor conventionalities. He is a vigorous student of the Bible and the Koran; he knows his subject, and speaks his reasonings without reservation, and in the end we see the vision of the omnipotent God fixed in an enduring belief.
In the first clause of his will he declares: "I die in the Apostolic Roman religion, in the bosom of which I was born more than fifty years since." If any other proof were needed that he believed in the divinity of Jesus Christ, this avowed declaration on the eve of the great transformation may be confirmed by the fact that the cardinal doctrine of the Roman religion centres in the divinity of Christ. Again, in the course of his public and private duties, you frequently come across passages in his letters and official documents such as "May God have you in His holy keeping." It may be said that this is a mere form or figure of speech but then unbelievers do not use such phrases.
We find in everyday life a lack of courage to do justice and be generous to one another. But surely, in the interest of political, historical, and personal rectitude, the dying man's message to the world should absolve him from having his lucid, succinct conversations jargoned into a tattered tedium. It is either a perversion of understanding or a misanthropic egoism that can twist Napoleon's discourses on religious topics into meaning that he ever was seriously thinking of giving preference to the worship of the sun, or contemplating becoming a follower of Mohammed, or that he ever showed real evidences of being an unbeliever in the God of his race.
He praised many of the virtues of the Mohammedan religion, such as honesty, cleanliness, temperance, and devoutness, and denounced with scathing sarcasm, not Christ, but professing Christians whose conduct towards himself was beneath the dignity of the pagan. But this in no way detracts from his admiration of the genuine follower of Christ. He says that "religious ideas have more influence than certain narrow-minded philosophers are willing to believe; they are capable of rendering great services to humanity." Again, he says that "the Christian religion is the religion of a civilised people; it is entirely spiritual, and the reward which Jesus Christ promises to the elect is that they shall see God face to face; and its whole tendency is to subdue the passions; it offers nothing to excite them."
There were frequently heated arguments on religion between Napoleon and members of his suite during the dreary hours at Longwood, and on one of these occasions he, Montholon, and Antommarchi are the debaters. To the former he suddenly flashed out: "I know men well, and I tell you that Jesus Christ was not a man"; then he curtly attacks the pretentious doctor by informing him that "aspiring to be an atheist does not make a man one."
Dr. Alexander Mair published in the Expositor, some twenty years ago, a critical study of the authenticity of the declarations imputed to Napoleon when at St. Helena on the subject of the Christian religion, from which I make the following extract:—