During dinner, the Emperor, turning, with a stern look, to one of the servants in waiting, exclaimed, to our utter consternation: “So then, assassin, you intended to kill the Governor!—Wretch!—If such a thought ever again enters your head, you will have to do with me; you will see how I shall behave to you.” And then, addressing himself to us, he said, “Gentlemen, it is Santini, there, who determined to kill the Governor. That rascal was about to involve us in a sad embarrassment. I found it necessary to exert all my authority, all my indignation to restrain him.”
In order to explain this extraordinary transaction, it is necessary for me to observe that Santini, who was formerly usher of the Emperor’s cabinet, and whose extreme devotion had prompted him to follow his master and serve him, no matter, he said, in what capacity, was a Corsican, of deep feeling and a warm imagination. Enraged at the Governor’s ill usage, no longer able to bear with patience the affronts which he saw heaped upon the Emperor, exasperated at the decline of his health, and affected himself with a distracting melancholy, he had, for some time, done no work in the house, and, under pretence of procuring some game for the Emperor’s table, his employment seemed to be that of shooting in the neighbourhood. In a moment of confidence, he told his countryman Cypriani that he had formed the project, by the means of his double barrelled piece, of killing the Governor, and then putting an end to himself. And all, said he, to rid the world of a monster.
Cypriani, who knew his countryman’s character, was shocked at his determination, and communicated it to several other servants. They all united in entreating him to lay aside his design, but their efforts, instead of mitigating, seemed but to inflame his irritation. They resolved then to disclose the project to the Emperor, who had him instantly brought before him: “And it was only,” he told me some time afterwards, “by imperial, by pontifical authority, that I finally succeeded in making the scoundrel desist altogether from his project. Observe for a moment the fatal consequences which he was about to produce. I should have also passed for the murderer, the assassin, of the Governor, and in reality it would have been very difficult to destroy such an impression in the mind of a great number of people.”
The Emperor read to us La Mort de Pompée, which was stated in the journals to be the subject of general interest at Paris, on account of its political allusions. And this gave rise to the remark that government had been obliged to forbid the representation of Richard, and that, certainly on the fifth and sixth of October, Louis XVI. little thought of its ever being prohibited for its allusions to another. “The fact is that times are wonderfully changed,” said the Emperor.
30th.—The Emperor, after a few turns in the garden, went to General Gourgaud’s apartment, where he was a long time employed, with his compasses and pencil, in laying down the coast of Syria, and the plan of Saint Jean d’Acre, which the general was to execute. In marking some points about Acre, he said:—“I passed many unpleasant moments there.”
In the evening we had Le Mariage de Figaro, which entertained and interested us much more than we had been led to expect. “It was,” observed the Emperor, in shutting the book, “the Revolution already put into action.”
LA HARPE’S MÉLANIE.—NUNS.—CONVENTS.—MONKS
OF LA TRAPPE.—THE FRENCH CLERGY.
31st.—The weather was horrible about three o’clock, and the Emperor could scarcely reach Madame de Montholon’s saloon. He amused himself for some time there in reading the Thousand and One Nights, and afterwards, perceiving a volume of the Moniteur on which M. de Montholon was then employed, and which lay open in the part relative to the negotiations for a maritime armistice in 1800, his whole attention was absorbed by them for upwards of an hour.
After dinner, the Emperor read first La Mère Coupable, in which we felt interested, and next the Mélanie of La Harpe, which he thought wretchedly conceived and very badly executed. “It was,” he said, “a turgid declamation, in perfect conformity with the taste of the times, founded in fashionable calumnies and absurd falsehoods. When La Harpe wrote that piece, a father certainly had not the power of forcing his daughter to take the veil; the laws would never have allowed it. This play, which was performed at the beginning of the Revolution, was indebted for its success solely to the extravagance of public opinion. Now, that the passion is over, it must be deemed a wretched performance! La Harpe’s characters are all unnatural. He should not have attacked defective institutions with defective weapons.”
The Emperor said that La Harpe had so completely failed in his object, with regard to his own impressions, that all his feelings were in favour of the father, while he was shocked at the daughter’s conduct. He had never seen the performance, without being tempted to start from his seat, and call out to the daughter: “You have but to say, No, and we will all take your part; you will find a protector in every citizen.”