We enquired what might have been the sentiments of Piedmont with regard to himself. He had, he said, a particular affection for that province. M. de Saint-Marsan, on whose fidelity he relied to the end, had assured him, at the period of our reverses, that the country would shew itself one of his best provinces.
“In fact,” continued the Emperor, “the Piedmontese do not like to be a small state; their King was a real feudal lord, whom it was necessary to court, or to dread: He had more power and authority than I, who, as Emperor of the French, was but a supreme magistrate, bound to see the laws executed, and unable to dispense with them. Had I it in my power to prevent the arrest of a courtier for debt? Could I have put a stop to the regular action of the laws, no matter upon whom they operated?”
During the conversation at dinner, the Emperor inquired whether the quantity of river water flowing into the Mediterranean and the Black Sea had been calculated. This led him to express a wish that a calculation of the fluvial water of Europe should be made, and that the proportion contributed by each valley and each stream, should be ascertained. He regretted much that he had not proposed this series of scientific questions. This was, he observed, his grand system. Did any useful, curious or interesting idea suggest itself to him: “I proposed, at my levees, or in my familiar communications, analogous questions to my Members of the Institute, with orders to resolve them. The solution became the subject of public inquiry; it was analyzed, contested, adopted or rejected; and there is nothing which cannot be accomplished in this way. It is the grand lever of improvement for a great nation, possessing a great deal of intelligence, and a great deal of knowledge.”
The Emperor also observed on this subject, that geography had never been so successfully cultivated as at present, and that his expeditions had contributed somewhat to its improvement. He afterwards noticed the canals, which he had caused to be made in France, and particularly mentioned that from Strasburg to Lyons, in which, he hoped sufficient progress had been made to induce others to complete it. He thought that, out of thirty millions, twenty-four must have been already expended.
“Communications are now established in the interior from Bordeaux to Lyons and Paris. I had constructed a great number of canals, and projected a great many more.” One of us having observed that a proposal for the construction of a very useful canal had been submitted to the Emperor, but that measures had been taken to deceive him, for the purpose of preventing his acceptance of the offer: “Without doubt,” said the Emperor, “the plan must have appeared advantageous only on paper; but I suppose it would have been necessary to advance money, which was drawn from me with difficulty.”—No, Sire, the refusal was but the effect of an intrigue. Your Majesty was deceived.”—“It was impossible, with respect to such a subject. You speak without sufficient information.”—“But I am confident of it. I was acquainted with the plan, the offers and the subscribers; my relations had put down their names for considerable sums. The object was the union of the Meuse with the Marne. The length of the canal would have been less than seven leagues.”—“But you do not tell us all; it was, perhaps, required that I should grant immense national forests in the environs, which I should not have agreed to.”—“No, Sire, the whole was an intrigue of your Board of Bridges and Roads.”—“But even then, it was necessary for them to allege some reasons, some appearance of public interest. What reasons did they assign?”—“Sire, that the profits would have been too considerable.”—“But in that case the plan ought to have been submitted to me in person, and I would have carried it into execution. I repeat, that you are not justified by the facts; you are speaking now to a man upon the very subject which constantly engaged his attention. The Board of Bridges and Roads were, on their part, never better pleased than when they were employed. There never was an individual who proposed the construction of a bridge that was not taken at his word. If he asked for a toll for twenty-five years, I was disposed to grant him one for thirty. If it cost me nothing, it was a matter of indifference whether it would prove useful. It was still a capital with which I enriched the soil. Instead of rejecting proposals for canals, I eagerly courted them. But, my dear Sir, there are no two things that resemble each other so little as the conversation of a saloon, and the consideration of an Administrative Council. The projector is always right in a saloon; his projects would be magnificent and infallible, if he were listened to, and if he can, by some little contrivance, but connect the refusal under which he[he] suffers with some bottles of wine, with some intrigue carried on by a wife or a mistress, the romance is complete, and that is what you probably heard. But an Administrative Council is not to be managed so, because it comes to no decision but on facts and accurate measurement. What is the canal you mentioned? I cannot be unacquainted with it.”—“Sire, from the Meuse to the Marne, a distance of seven leagues only.”—“Very well! my dear Sir, it is from the Meuse to the Aisne you mean, and it would have been less than seven leagues. I shall soon recollect all about it; there is, however, but one little difficulty to overcome, and that is that at this very instant it is doubtful whether the project be practicable. There, as in other places, Hippocrates says yes, and Galen says no. Tarbé maintained that it was impossible, and denied that there was a sufficiency of water at the point where it was to commence. I repeat, that you are speaking to him, who, of all others was the most attentive to these objects, more especially in the environs of Paris. It was the constant subject of my thoughts to render Paris the real capital of Europe. I sometimes wished it, for instance, to become a city with a population of two, three, or four millions, in short, something fabulous, colossal, unexampled until our days, and with public establishments suitable to its population.”
Some one having then observed that, if Heaven had allowed the Emperor to reign sixty years, as it had Louis XIV., he would have left many grand monuments: “Had Heaven but granted me twenty years, and a little more leisure,” resumed the Emperor with vivacity, “ancient Paris would have been sought for in vain; not a trace of it would have been left, and I should have changed the face of France. Archimedes promised to do any thing, provided he had a resting place for his lever; I should have done as much, wherever I could have found a point of support for my energy, my perseverance, and my budgets; a world might be created with budgets. I should have displayed the difference between a constitutional Emperor and a King of France. The Kings of France have never possessed any administrative or municipal institution. They have merely shown themselves great Lords who were ruined by their men of business.
“The nation itself has nothing in its character and its tastes but what is transitory and perishable. Every thing is done for the gratification of the moment and of caprice, nothing for duration.... That is our motto, and it is exemplified by our manners in France. Every one passes his life in doing and undoing; nothing is ever left behind. Is it not unbecoming that Paris should not possess even a French theatre, or an Opera house, in any respect worthy of its high claims?
“I have often set myself against the feasts which the city of Paris wished to give me. They consisted of dinners, balls, artificial fire-works, at an expense of four, six, or eight hundred thousand francs; the preparations for which obstructed the public for several days, and which afterwards cost as much for their removal as they had for their construction. I proved that, with these idle expenses, they might have erected lasting and magnificent monuments.
“One must have gone through as much as I have, in order to be acquainted with all the difficulty of doing good. If the business related to chimneys, partitions, and furniture for some individuals in the imperial palaces, the work was quickly accomplished; but if it was necessary to lengthen the garden of the Tuileries, to render some quarters wholesome, to cleanse some sewers, and to perform a task beneficial to the public, in which particular persons had no direct interest, I found it requisite to exert all the energy of my character, to write six, ten letters a day, and to get into a downright passion. It was in this way that I laid out as much as thirty millions in sewers, for which no body will ever thank me. I pulled down a property worth seventeen millions in houses in front of the Tuileries, for the purpose of forming the Carousel, and throwing open the Louvre. What I did is immense; what I had resolved to do and what I had projected was much more so.”
A person then remarked that the Emperor’s labours had not been limited either to Paris or to France, but that almost every city in Italy exhibited traces of his creative powers. Wherever one travelled, at the foot as well as on the top of the Alps, in the sands of Holland, on the banks of the Rhine, Napoleon, always Napoleon, was to be seen.