21st.—I had at length taken possession of the new lodging built for me instead of my former oven. Upon a soil constantly damp had been placed a floor eighteen feet long by eleven wide; this was surrounded by a wall of a foot and half in thickness, composed of loam, and which might have been kicked down with the foot: at the height of seven feet it was covered with a roof of boards, defended by a coating of paper and tar. Such were the construction and the outline of my new palace, divided into two apartments, one of which contained two beds separated by a chest of drawers, and afforded room for only a single chair; the other, at once my saloon and my library, had a single window strongly fastened up on account of the violence of the winds and rain: on the right and left of it were two writing-tables, for me and my son; on the opposite side a couch and two chairs. This was the whole of the furniture and accommodations: add to this that the aspect of the two windows is towards a wind constantly blowing from the same quarter, and generally accompanied with rain, often very heavy, and which, previously to our taking possession, already forced its way through the cracks, or soaked through the walls and the roof. I had just passed my first night in these new quarters; I was indisposed, and my change of bed had prevented me from sleeping. I was informed about seven o’clock, that the Emperor was going out on horseback; I replied that, not feeling myself well, I should endeavour to take some rest; but only a few minutes had elapsed when a person hastily entered my apartment, opened my curtains with an air of authority, found fault with me for being so idle, and pronounced that my ailments must be shaken off; then,[then,] struck with the smell of the paint, the extreme smallness of the room, and the closeness of the two beds, he decided that we could no longer be suffered to sleep huddled together in that way; that it was far too unwholesome; and that I must return to the bed in the topographical cabinet, which I ought not to abandon through false delicacy; and that, if I occasioned any inconvenience there, I should be told of it. It will have been guessed that this person was the Emperor. I was, of course, soon out of bed, dressed, and well. The Emperor was, however, already far off: I had to seek him in the park. After I had overtaken him, our conversation turned on the long audience that he had given to Governor Wilks on the preceding day. He dwelt, with much good humour, on the great importance which my work appeared to have given me in the Governor’s eyes, and the extreme good-will towards me with which it seemed to have inspired him. “Of course,” continued he, “it is understood that these sentiments are to be mutual; the usual regard and fraternity of authors, as long as they do not criticize each other. And is he aware of your relationship to the venerable Las Casas?” I answered that I knew nothing of the matter; but General Gourgaud, who was on the other side of the Emperor, replied in the affirmative. “And how do you know it yourself?” said the Emperor to me; “Are you not romancing with us?” “The following, Sire, are my proofs. Our family had been two hundred years in France, when Barthelemi de Las Casas flourished in Spain; but the Spanish historians all describe him as a native of the same city from which we ourselves came, that is to say, Seville. They all mention him as of an ancient family, of French origin, and state his ancestors to have passed into Spain precisely at the time when our family went there.”—“What, then, you are not Spanish? He was French, as well as you!”—“Yes, Sire.”—“Let us hear all about it; come, Sir Castellan, Sir Knight-errant, Sir Paladin,—let us see you in your glory; unrol your old parchments; come, enjoy yourself.”—“Sire, one of my ancestors followed Henry Count of Burgundy, who, at the head of a few crusaders, achieved the conquest of Portugal, about the year 1100. He was his standard-bearer at the famous battle of Ourique, which founded the Portugese monarchy. Afterwards we returned to France with Queen Blanche, when she came to be married to the father of St. Louis. Sire, this is the whole.”
THE EMPEROR’S READINGS.—MADAME DE SEVIGNÉ.—CHARLES XII.—PAUL AND VIRGINIA.—VERTOT.—ROLLIN.—VELLY.—GARNIER.
22nd–26th. These days were rendered unpleasant by almost incessant rain. The Emperor was only twice able to ride out—in the park one morning, and once in the afternoon through our usual valley, which the weather had rendered almost impassable. Nor was it more practicable to make use of the calash; we were therefore compelled to confine ourselves to a few turns in the garden, and to share in the gloom of the weather. We worked, however, the more on this account. The Emperor regularly took excellent and long lessons in English. It is his custom to pass all the morning in reading; he reads whole works of very considerable extent regularly through, without feeling in the least fatigued; he always read some part of them to me before he began his English lessons.
One of them was the Letters of Madame de Sevigné, the style of which is so easy, and depicts so faithfully the manners of the time. Reading the death of Turenne, and the trial of Fouquet, he observed, with respect to the latter, that Madame de Sevigné seemed to evince too much warmth, too much earnestness and tenderness, for mere friendship.
Another was Charles XII., in reading whose defence of his house, at Bender, against the Turks, he could not help laughing, and repeating as they did, “Ironhead! Ironhead!” He asked me whether the nature of this monarch’s death was a settled point. I told him that I had it from the mouth of Gustavus III. himself, that he had been assassinated by his followers. Gustavus had examined his body in the vault; the ball was a pistol-bullet; it had been fired very near, and behind him, &c.
At the beginning of the Revolution, I was well acquainted with Gustavus III., at the waters of Aix-la-Chapelle; and, though I was then very young, I had more than once the honour of conversing with him: he even promised me a place in his navy, if our affairs in France should turn out unfavourably.
Another day the Emperor was reading Paul and Virginia; he gave full effect to the touching passages, which were always simple and natural; those which abounded with the pathos, the abstract and false ideas so much in fashion when the work was published, were all, in the Emperor’s opinion, cold, bad, spoiled. He said he had been infatuated with this book in his youth; but he had little personal regard for its author; he could never forgive him for having imposed on his generosity on his return from the Army of Italy. “Bernardin de St. Pierre’s sensibility and delicacy,” said he, “were little in harmony with his charming picture of Paul and Virginia. He was a bad man; he used his wife, Didot the printer’s daughter, very ill; he was always ready to ask charity, without the least shame. On my return from the Army of Italy, Bernardin came to see me, and almost immediately began to tell me of his wants. I, who in my early youth had dreamed of nothing but Paul and Virginia, and who moreover felt flattered by a confidence which I imagined was reposed in me alone, and which I attributed to my great celebrity, hastened to return his visit, and, unperceived by any one, left on the corner of his chimney-piece a little rouleau of five-and-twenty louis. But how was I mortified on seeing every one laugh at the delicacy of my proceeding, and on learning that such ceremony was entirely superfluous with M. Bernardin, who made it his trade to beg of all comers, and to receive from every body. I always retained some little resentment towards him, for having thus imposed upon me. It was otherwise with my family. Joseph allowed him a large pension, and Louis was constantly making him presents.”
But though the Emperor liked Paul and Virginia, he laughed, for very pity, at the Studies of Nature, by the same author. “Bernardin,” said he, “though versed in the belles lettres, was very little of a geometrician; this last work was so bad that scientific men disdained to answer it: Bernardin complained loudly of their not noticing him. The celebrated mathematician Lagrange, when speaking on this subject, always said, alluding to the Institute, ‘If Bernardin were one of our class—if he spoke our language, we would call him to order; but he belongs to the Academy, and his style is out of our line.’”[line.’”] Bernardin was complaining as usual, one day, to the First Consul, of the silence of the learned with respect to his works. Napoleon asked, “Do you understand the differential method, M. Bernardin?”—“No.”—“Well, go and learn it, and then you will be able to answer yourself.” Afterwards, when Emperor, every time he perceived St. Pierre, he used to say to him, “M. Bernardin, when are we to have any more Paul and Virginias, or Indian Cottages? You ought to supply us every six months.”
In reading Vertot’s Roman Revolutions, of which in other respects the Emperor thinks highly, he found the declamations much too diffuse. This was his constant complaint against every work he took up; he had in his youth, he said, been much to blame in this respect himself. He may justly be said to have thoroughly reformed afterwards. He amused himself with striking out the superfluous phrases in Vertot; and the result was that, after the erasures, the work appeared much more energetic and animated. “It would certainly be a most valuable and successful labour,” said he, “if any man of taste and discernment would devote his time to reducing the principal works in our language in this manner. I hardly know any writer except Montesquieu who would escape those curtailments. He often looked into Rollin, whom he thought diffuse, and too credulous. Crevier, his continuator, seemed to Napoleon detestable. He complained of our classical works, and of the time which our young people are compelled to lose in reading such bad books. They were composed by rhetoricians and mere professors, he said; whereas such immortal subjects, the basis of all our knowledge throughout life, ought to have been written and edited by statesmen and men of the world.” The Emperor had excellent ideas on this subject; the want of time alone prevented him from carrying them into execution.
The Emperor was still more dissatisfied with our French historians; he could not bear to read any of them. Velly is rich in words, and poor in meaning: his continuators are still worse. “Our[“Our] history,” said the Emperor, “should either be in four or five volumes, or in a hundred.” He had been acquainted with Garnier, who continued Velly and Villaret; he lived very near Malmaison. He was an old man of eighty, and lodged in a small set of apartments on the ground-floor, close to the road. Struck with the officious attention which this good old man always evinced whenever the First Consul was passing, the latter enquired who he was. On learning that it was Garnier, he comprehended his motives. “He, no doubt, imagined,” said the Emperor pleasantly, “that a First Consul was his property, as historian. I dare say, however, he was astonished to find Consuls, where he had been accustomed to see Kings.” Napoleon told him so, himself, laughing, when he called him one day, and settled a good pension on him. “From that time,” said the Emperor, “the poor man, in the warmth of his gratitude, would gladly have written any thing I pleased, with all his heart.”