“It is generally said,” the Emperor observed, “that there are certain wounds, to which death seems preferable; but this is very seldom the case, I assure you. It is at the moment we are going to part with existence that we cling to it with all our might. Lannes, the most courageous of men, deprived of both his legs, would not hear of death, and was irritated to such a degree as to declare that the two surgeons who attended him deserved to be hanged for behaving so brutally towards a Marshal. He had unfortunately overheard them whisper to each other, as they thought without being heard, that it was impossible he could recover. Every moment the unfortunate Lannes called for the Emperor; he twined himself round me,” said Napoleon, “with all he had left of life; he would hear of no one but me, he thought but of me; it was a kind of instinct! Undoubtedly he loved his wife and children better than me; yet he did not speak of them: it was he that protected them, whilst I on the contrary was his protector. I was for him something vague and undefined, a superior being, his Providence, which he implored!”
Somebody then observed that the world had spoken very differently on the subject; that it had been reported that Lannes had died like a maniac, vociferating imprecations against the Emperor, at whom he seemed enraged; and it was added that he had always an aversion to the Emperor, and had often manifested it to him with insolence. “What an absurdity,” said the Emperor, “Lannes, on the contrary, adored me. He was assuredly one of the men on whom I could most implicitly rely. It is very true that, in the impetuosity of his disposition, he has sometimes suffered some hasty expressions against me to escape his lips, but he would probably have broken the head of any person who had chanced to hear them.”
Returning to Murat, some one observed that he had greatly influenced the unfortunate events of 1814. “He determined them,” said the Emperor, “he is one of the principal causes of our being here. But the fault is originally mine. There were several men whom I had made too great; I had raised them above the sphere of their intelligence. I was reading, some days since, his proclamation on abandoning the Viceroy, which I had not seen before. It is difficult to conceive any thing disgraced by a greater degree of turpitude: he says in that document that the moment is come to choose between two banners, that of crime and that of virtue. It is my banner which he calls the banner of crime! and it is Murat, my creature, the husband of my sister, the man who owed every thing to me, who would have been nothing without me, who exists by me, and is known through me alone—it is Murat who writes this! It is impossible to desert the cause of misfortune with more unfeeling brutality; and to run with more unblushing baseness to hail a new destiny.”
From that moment, Madame (mother of the Emperor) refused to have any thing more to do with either Murat or his wife; to all their entreaties she invariably answered that she held traitors and treachery in abhorrence. As soon as she was at Rome, after the disasters of 1814, Murat hastened to send her eight magnificent horses out of his stables at Naples; but Madame would not accept them. She resisted, in like manner, every effort of her daughter Caroline, who constantly repeated that, after all, the fault was not hers; that she had no share in it; that she could not command her husband. But Madame answered, like Clytemnestra—"If you could not command him, you ought at least to have opposed him:—but what struggles have you made? what blood has flowed? At the expense of your own life, you ought to have defended your brother, your benefactor, your master, against the sanguinary attempts of your husband.
“On my return from Elba,” said the Emperor, "Murat’s head was turned, on hearing that I had landed in France. The first intelligence he received of this event informed him that I was at Lyons. He was accustomed to my great returns of fortune; he had more than once seen me placed in most extraordinary circumstances. On this occasion, he thought me already master of all Europe, and determined to endeavour to wrest Italy from me; for that was his object, the aim of all his hopes. It was in vain that some men, of the greatest influence amongst the nations which he attempted to excite to rebellion, threw themselves at his feet and assured him that he was mistaken; that the Italians had a king on whom alone they had bestowed their love and their esteem. Nothing could stop him; he ruined himself, and contributed to ruin us a second time; for Austria, supposing that he was acting at my instigation, would not believe my professions, and mistrusted me. Murat’s unfortunate end corresponds with his conduct. Murat was endowed with extraordinary courage and little intelligence. The too great disproportion between those two qualities explains the man entirely. It was difficult, even impossible, to be more courageous than Murat and Lannes; but Murat had remained courageous and nothing more. The mind of Lannes, on the contrary, had risen to the level of his courage; he had become a giant. However[However]," said the Emperor, in ending the conversation, “the execution of Murat is nevertheless horrible. It is an event in the history of the morals of Europe; an infraction of the rules of public decorum.—A king has caused another king, acknowledged by all the others, to be shot! What a spell he has broken!” . . . . . . . . .
SUMMARY OF THE THREE MONTHS OF
APRIL, MAY, AND JUNE.
I have already observed that, in a work like the present, it is impossible to keep up in any point a unity of interest and of object; I shall, therefore, now attempt to supply this defect by retracing, in a very few words, and uninterruptedly, the circumstances of aggravation which have occurred in the Emperor’s situation during these three months; the repeated instances of ill-treatment to which he has been subjected; the visible decline of his health; the general tenor of his habits; the principal topics of his conversation:—in a word, the bulletin, both physical and moral, of his person, during that short space of time.
1st. A new Governor arrives, who turns out to be a man of either very narrow views, or very bad intentions—a corporal with his watch-word, instead of a general with his instructions.
2dly. A declaration is required from every one of the captives that he submits beforehand to all the restrictions that may be imposed on Napoleon, and this in the hopes of detaching them from his person.
3dly. An official communication is made to us of the convention of the allied Sovereigns, who, without further ceremony, proclaim and sanction the banishment of Napoleon.