FIRST ENGLISH LESSON, &c.
17th.—The Emperor took his first lesson in the English language to-day. And as it was my intention to put him at once in a situation to read the papers with readiness, this first lesson consisted of nothing more than getting acquainted with an English newspaper; in studying the form and plan of it; in learning the places that are always given to the different subjects which it contains; in separating the notices and gossip of the town from politics; and, in the latter, in learning to distinguish what is authentic from what is mere report or conjecture.
I have engaged that, if the Emperor could endure being annoyed every day with such lessons, he would be able to read the papers in a month without the assistance of any of us. The Emperor wished afterwards to do some exercises; he wrote some sentences which were dictated to him, and translated them into English, with the assistance of a little table, which I made for him, of the auxiliary verbs and articles, and aided by the dictionary for other words which I made him look out himself. I explained to him the rules of syntax and grammar, as they came before us: in this manner he formed various sentences, which amused him more than the versions which we also attempted. After the lesson, at two o’clock, we took a walk in the garden.
Several musquet shots were fired: they were so near us that they appeared to have been fired in the garden itself. The Emperor observed to me that my son (we thought it was he) seemed to have good sport: I replied that it was the last time he should enjoy it so near the Emperor. “Really,” said he, “you may as well go and tell him that he is only to come within cannon-shot of us.” I ran: we had accused him wrongfully, for the guns were fired by the people who were training the Emperor’s horses.
After dinner, during coffee, the Emperor, taking me to the corner of the chimney-piece, put his hand upon my head to measure my height, and said, “I am a giant to you.”—“Your Majesty is a giant to so many others,” I observed to him, “that I am not at all concerned at it.” He spoke immediately of something else; for he does not like to dwell on expressions of this kind.
OUR DAILY HABITS.—CONVERSATION WITH GOVERNOR WILKS.—ARMIES.—CHEMISTRY.—POLITICS.—REMARKS ON INDIA.—DELPHINE, BY MAD. DE STAËL.—NECKER, CALONNE.
18th—20th. We led a life of great uniformity. The Emperor did not go out in the mornings. The English lesson was very regularly taken about two o’clock; then followed either a walk in the garden, or some presentations, which, however, were very rare; afterwards a little excursion in the calash, as the horses were at last arrived. Before dinner we proceeded with the revision of the Campaigns of Italy or Egypt: after dinner we read romances.
On the 20th, the Emperor received Governor Wilks, with whom he had a profound discussion on the army, the sciences, government, and the Indies. Speaking of the organization of the English army, he dwelt much on the principles of promotion in it; expressing his surprise that, in a country in which equality of rights is maintained, the soldiers so seldom become officers.
Colonel Wilks admitted that the English soldiers were not formed to become officers; and said that the English were equally astonished at the great difference they had remarked in the French army, where almost every soldier shewed the nascent talents of an officer. “That,” observed the Emperor, “is one of the great results of the Conscription; it has rendered the French army the best constituted that ever existed. It is an institution,” he continued, “eminently national, and already strongly interwoven with our habits; it had ceased to be a cause of grief, except to mothers; and the time was at hand, when a girl would not have listened to a young man who had not acquitted himself of this debt to his country. And it would have been only when arrived at this point,” added he, “that the Conscription would have manifested the full extent of its advantages. When the service no longer bears the appearance of punishment or compulsory duty, but is become a point of honour, on which all are jealous, then only is the nation great, glorious and powerful; it is then that its existence is proof against reverses, invasions—even the hand of time!
“Besides,” continued he, “it may be truly said that there is nothing that may not be obtained from Frenchmen by the excitement of danger; it seems to animate them; it is an inheritance which they derive from their Gallic forefathers.... Courage, the love of glory, are, with the French, an instinct, a kind of sixth sense. How often in the heat of battle has my attention been fixed on my young conscripts, rushing, for the first time, into the thickest of the fight: honour and valour bursting forth at every pore.”