CHARACTERS. BAILLI, LAFAYETTE, MONGES, GRÉGOIRE, &C.—ST. DOMINGO.—SYSTEM TO BE FOLLOWED.—DICTATIONS ON THE CONVENTION.
June 12th.—We have had three days of horrible weather, when a moment that promised to continue fine, induced the Emperor to take an airing in his carriage. He had just finished reading the History of the Constituent Assembly, by Rabeau de St. Etienne. He entertained very nearly the same opinion of this writer as of Lacretelle. He then took occasion to notice several characters.
“Bailli,” he said, “was not a bad man, but unquestionably a miserable politician. Lafayette was another simpleton, and by no means formed for the eminent character he wished to represent. His political simplicity was such, that he could not avoid being the constant dupe of men and things. His breaking up of the chambers on my return from Waterloo, was my ruin. Who could have persuaded him, that I had arrived merely for the purpose of dissolving them;—I, whose only safety was centred in them?”
One of the party saying, by way of excuse or extenuation; “It was, however, sire, the same man, who, treating afterwards with the allies, was filled with indignation at their proposal of delivering up your Majesty, and eagerly asked, if it was to the prisoner of Olmutz they dared to address themselves?”—"But, sir," replied the Emperor, “you run from one subject to another, or rather, you concur with, instead of opposing, my opinion. I have not attacked the sentiments or intentions of M. de Lafayette; I have only complained of their fatal results.”
The Emperor then continued, in the same way, to review the leading men of that period. He dwelt at considerable length on the affair of Favras, &c.
“For the rest,” observed the Emperor, "nothing was more common than to find men of that epoch quite the reverse in character of that which their words and actions seemed to establish. Monges, for instance, might be considered a terrible man. When war was resolved upon, he declared from the tribune of the Jacobins, that he would give his two daughters in marriage to the two first soldiers who might be wounded by the enemy. This he was at liberty to do, in the strict sense of the gift, as far as it respected himself; but he maintained, that others should be compelled to follow his example, and that all the nobility should be put to death, &c. Yet Monges was one of the mildest and weakest men living, and would not have suffered a chicken to be killed, if he had been obliged to do it himself or to see it done. This furious republican, as he believed himself, cherished, however, a kind of worship for me, which he pushed to adoration. He loved me, as a man loves his mistress.
"Grégoire, whose animosity to the clergy, whom he wished to bring back to their original simplicity, was so great that he might have passed for a champion of irreligion, may be mentioned as another instance; yet Grégoire, when the revolutionists were denying their God, and abolishing the priesthood, was very near being massacred in mounting the tribune, for the purpose of boldly declaring his religious sentiments, and protesting that he would die a priest. At the very moment when the work of destruction was going on in all the churches against the altars, Grégoire erected one in his own apartment, and said mass there every day. This man’s lot, however, is decidedly cast. If he be driven from France, he must take refuge in St. Domingo. The friend, the advocate, the eulogist of the negroes will be a god, or a saint, among them."
St. Domingo naturally became the next subject of our conversation. I had, in my younger days, seen that colony in its most flourishing state. The Emperor put many questions to me, and made himself acquainted with all the circumstances relating to that remote period. When his enquiries were over, he said, “I shall, no doubt, astonish you: but I am convinced, even from your own statements, that the island has not, at this moment, lost a third, certainly not one half of its value, and that, in a short time, it will recover all its former prosperity.”
I should not, in reality, be surprised at it; for all the absurd stories, circulated in Europe respecting France, ought to put us on our guard against those which might be safely told with regard to St. Domingo.
The Emperor said that, after the restoration, the French government had sent out emissaries and proposals which were laughed at by the negroes. “As to myself,” he added, “on my return from Elba, I would have settled all differences with them; I would have recognized their independence, contented myself with some factories, like those on the coast of Africa, endeavoured to draw them closer to the mother country, and to establish a kind of family intercourse with them, which might, in my opinion, have been easily accomplished.”