ANDOVER: STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY B. BENSLEY.
Footnotes
[1]. Note by M.B.C.—Bonaparte attached a high value to the proofs that his return was not effected by military manœuvres. I am sorry that I have not by me six pages which he had written or dictated on this subject, and which he had carefully corrected. He put them into my hands at the time of the communication referred to here. He desired that I would reply to Lord Castlereagh, who, in a speech in parliament, had attributed all his success to the army.
Not choosing to write at all, till I had ascertained that it was not a despot that I was restoring to France, I declined this task; and, in 1815, I entrusted the sketch which Napoleon had given me to one of my friends, who set out for England, and from whom I have hitherto neglected to get it back again. It was written with much warmth; it contained expressions singular, but powerful, a great rapidity of thought, and some strokes of real eloquence.
[2]. This event took place in the presence of twenty-two persons:—The Emperor.—Dubois, Corvisart, Bourdier and Ivan.—Madames de Montebello, de Lucay, and de Montesquiou. The six first ladies:—Ballant, Deschamps, Durant, Hureau, Nabusson, and Gerard. Five ladies of the bed-chamber.—Mademoiselles Honoré, Edouard, Barbier, Aubert, and Geoffroy. The Keeper;—Madame Blaise, and two maids of the wardrobe.
[3]. In an interesting work published some years since relative to the return from Elba, there is this passage: “When young Napoleon came into the world, he was supposed to be dead; he had neither warmth, motion, nor respiration. Repeated efforts were made to produce signs of life, when the hundred guns destined to proclaim his birth were successively fired. The commotion and shock which they occasioned acted so powerfully on the organs of the royal infant as to bring him to his senses.”
[4]. It is a singular fact that the person from whom I had this information on agriculture, in Languedoc, was the identical M. de Villèle, who has since become celebrated.
[5]. One day at Longwood running over the list of the senators who had signed the deposition, one of us pointed out the name of M. de Valence, signed as secretary. But another explained that this signature was false, that M. de Valence had complained of it, and protested against it. “It is very true,” said the Emperor, “I know it; he has behaved well; Valence was true to the nation.”
[6]. See the plan of Longwood.