16th.—The Emperor had quitted the Encyclopedia Britannica, to take his lessons in English in the Annual Register. He read there the adventure of a Mr. Spencer Smith, arrested at Venice, ordered to be sent to Valenciennes, and who made his escape on the road. “This must be a very simple affair,” said the Emperor, “which the narrator has converted into a statement of importance.” The circumstance was totally unknown to him; it was a police affair of too little consequence, he observed, to have found its way up to him.
About four o’clock the captain of the Spey, just arrived from Europe, and the captain of the Ceylon, about to sail for England, were presented to the Emperor. He was in low spirits—he was unwell: the audience of the first was very short; that of the second would have been the same, had he not roused the Emperor by asking if we had any letters to send to Europe. The Emperor then desired me to ask him if he should see the Prince Regent; on his answering in the affirmative, I was charged to inform him that the Emperor was desirous of writing to the Prince Regent, but that in consequence of the observation of the Admiral, that he would open the letter, he had abstained from it, as being inconsistent with his dignity and with that of the Prince Regent himself: that he had, indeed, heard the laws of England much boasted of, but that he could not discover their benefits anywhere; that he had only now to expect, indeed to desire, an executioner; that the torture they made him endure was inhuman, savage; that it would have been more open and energetic to put him to death. The Emperor made me request of the captain that he would take upon him to deliver these words, and dismissed him: he looked very red and was much embarrassed.
SPIRIT OF THE INHABITANTS OF THE ISLE OF FRANCE.
17th.—An English Colonel, arrived from the Cape on his return from the Isle of France, came in the morning and addressed himself to me, to try to get an introduction to the Emperor. The Admiral had only allowed his vessel to remain two or three hours in the road. Having prevailed on the Emperor to receive him at four o’clock, he assured me that he would rather miss his vessel than lose such an opportunity. The Emperor was not very well, he had passed several hours in his bath; at four he received the Colonel.
The Emperor put many questions to him concerning the Isle of France, lately ceded to the English; it seems that its prosperity and its commerce suffer from its change of sovereignty.
After the departure of the Colonel, being alone with the Emperor in the garden, I told him that his person seemed to have remained very dear to the inhabitants of the Isle of France; that the Colonel had informed me that the name of Napoleon was never pronounced there but with commiseration. It was precisely on the day of a great festival in the colony, that they learned his departure from France and his arrival at Plymouth; the theatre was to be particularly attractive: the news having arrived during the day, in the evening there was not a single colonist, either white or of colour, in the house: there were only some English, who were exceedingly confused and irritated at the circumstance. The Emperor listened to me. “It is quite plain,” said he, after some moments’ silence; “this proves that the inhabitants of the Isle of France have continued French. I am the country; they love it: it has been wounded in my person, they are grieved at it.” I added that the change of dominion restraining their expressions, they durst not propose his health publicly; but that the Colonel said they never neglected it notwithstanding; they drank to him, this word had become consecrated to Napoleon. These details touched him. “Poor Frenchmen!” he said with emphasis—"Poor People! Poor Nation! I deserved all that, I loved thee! But thou, thou surely didst not deserve all the ills that press upon thee! Ah! thou didst merit well that one should devote himself to thee! But what infamy, what baseness, what degradation, it must be confessed, I had about me!" And, addressing himself to me, he added: “I do not speak here of your friends of the Fauxbourg-Saint-Germain; for with respect to them it is another matter.”
There frequently reached us incidents and expressions which, like those from the Isle of France, were calculated to excite emotion in the heart. The Island of Ascension, in our neighbourhood, had always been desert and abandoned; since we have been here, the English have thought proper to form an establishment there. The captain who went to take possession of it told us, on his return, that he was much astonished on landing to find upon the beach, May the great Napoleon live for ever!
In the last papers that reached us, among many good-natured sallies, it was remarked, in several languages, that Paris would never be happy till his Helen should be restored to him: these were a few drops of honey in our cup of wormwood.
HIS INTENTIONS RESPECTING ROME.—HORRIBLE
FOOD.—BRITANNICUS.
18th—19th. The Emperor was on horseback by eight o’clock. He had abstained from it for a long time: want of space to ride over was the cause. His health suffers visibly in consequence, and it is astonishing that the want of exercise is not still more hurtful to him, who was in the daily habit of taking it to a violent degree. On our return, the Emperor breakfasted out of doors; he detained us all. After breakfast, the conversation fell on Herculaneum and Pompeii; the phenomenon and epoch of their destruction, the time and the accident of their modern discovery, the monuments and the curiosities, which they have since afforded us. The Emperor said that if Rome had remained under his dominion, she would have risen again from her ruins: he intended to have cleared away all the rubbish; to have restored as much as possible. He did not doubt that, the same spirit extending through all the vicinity, it might have been in some degree the same with Herculaneum and Pompeii.