The Emperor thought this fable had far too much irony in it to be within the comprehension of children. It was likewise defective, he observed, in its principle and its moral; and this was the first time that he had been struck with these defects. It was false that the argument of the stronger was always the best; and if it sometimes happened so, in fact, that, he said, was the very evil, the abuse, which was to be condemned. The wolf, ought, therefore, to have been strangled in devouring the lamb.
Tristan is very idle. He confessed to the Emperor that he did not work every day. “Do you not eat every day?” said the Emperor to him, “Yes, Sire.” “Well, then, you ought to work every day; no one should eat who does not work.” “Oh! if that be the case, I will work every day,” said the child, quickly. “Such is the influence of the belly,” said the Emperor, patting that of little Tristan. "It is hunger that makes the world move. Come, my little man, if you are a good boy, we’ll make a page of you." "But I won’t be one," said Tristan, pouting and looking sulky.
Our afternoons were occupied in reading something selected in hopes of enabling us to kill time for an hour or two. At this period we were reading a voyage to Spitzbergen; the shipwreck of the Dutch at Nova Zembla; the Causes celébres, the trial of Calas; those of Martinguerre and the Marchioness of Brinvilliers. The author observed, in some part of the work, that the face often gave a false idea of the character. The Emperor paused, laid down the book, and said, with a look and tone that denoted conviction: “It is most true, and it is also true that no study will enable us to avoid this deception. How many proofs of this kind have I had! For instance, I had a person about me; his countenance undoubtedly.... But after all he had a mischievous eye; I ought to have guessed something from that.” He then went into some particulars of the character of the person in question. They had known each other from infancy, he said; he had long placed his entire confidence in this individual, who had talent and resources; the Emperor even thought that he had been attached and faithful—"But he was much too covetous," said he, “he was too fond of money. When I was dictating to him, and he sometimes had to write millions, it was never without a peculiar change of countenance, a smacking of his lips, and restlessness on his chair, which several times induced me to ask what ailed him.”
The Emperor said this vice was too glaring to allow of his retaining this person about him; but that, considering his other qualities, he ought, perhaps, to have contented himself with removing him into a different situation.
THE IRON MASK, &C.—INGENIOUS FICTION.
Friday, 12th.—The conversation to-day led us to speak of the Iron Mask, and we took a review of what has been said on the subject by Voltaire, Dutens, and others; and of what is found respecting him in Richelieu’s Memoirs. In these it is well known that he is said to have been the twin-brother of Louis XIV., and the elder of the two. On this occasion, some one added that, being employed in making out a pedigree, a person had come to him to demonstrate seriously to him that Napoleon was a lineal descendant from this Iron Mask, and consequently the legitimate heir of Louis XIII. and Henry IV., in preference to Louis XIV. and all his issue. The Emperor also said that he had heard something about it, and added that the credulity of mankind and their love of the marvellous are so great that it would not have been difficult to make out and substantiate something of the kind for the multitude, and that there would not have been wanting certain persons in the Senate to sanction it; probably, he observed, the very men who at a later period were so eager to revile him, as soon as they saw him in adversity.
We then went on to trace the foundation and the progress of this story. The name of the Governor of the Island of St. Marguerite, to whom the custody of the Iron Mask was entrusted, was M. de Bonpart, a circumstance, to begin with, very singular. This man, it was asserted, was aware of the origin of his prisoner. He had a daughter: she and the prisoner were both young; they saw each other and loved. The Governor, having informed the Court of this circumstance, it was decided that there was no great objection to allowing the unfortunate captive to seek in love an alleviation of his misery, and they were married.
The person who was speaking at this moment said that, at the time the above particulars were related to him, he had been very much entertained by them, and had happened to say that he thought the story very ingeniously imagined; upon which the narrator of it became excessively angry, maintaining that the marriage could very easily be verified by the registers of one of the parishes of Marseilles, which he named. He added that the children born of this marriage were silently and secretly conveyed to Corsica, where the difference of language, chance, or perhaps intention had, changed the name of Bonpart into Bonaparte and Buonaparte, which, after all, has the same meaning, and is in fact the same thing.
After this anecdote, it was added that, at the time of the revolution, a similar story had been made in favour of the Orleans branch. It was founded in a document found in the Bastille, and surmised that Anne of Austria, who was brought to bed after twenty-three years of sterility, had been delivered of a girl, and that Louis XIII. fearing she might have no more children, had been induced to put away that girl and falsely to substitute in her stead a boy, which was Louis XIV.; that the following year, however, the Queen had been again brought to bed, and this time really of a boy, which boy was Philip, the head of the house of Orleans, who thus turned out to be with his descendants the legitimate heirs to the throne, whilst Louis XIV. and his issue were only intruders and usurpers. According to that story the Iron Mask was a girl. A pamphlet on this subject was circulated in the provinces at the time the Bastille was taken, but the story did not gain credit, and very quietly disappeared, without having, it seems, engaged the attention of the capital even for a moment.
JUNOT, HIS WIFE, &C.