5th.—The Emperor did not go out until after five o’clock. He was in pain, and had taken a bath, where he remained too long, in consequence of the arrival of Sir H. Lowe, as he would not leave it until the Governor was gone.
The Emperor had been reading, while in the bath, the Ottoman History, in two volumes. He had conceived the idea, and regretted that he had been unable to execute it, of having all the histories of Europe, from the time of Louis XIV., composed from the documents belonging to our office for Foreign Affairs, where the regular official reports of all the ambassadors are deposited.
“My reign,” he observed, “would have been a perfect epoch for that object. The superiority of France, its independence, and regeneration, enabled the then government to publish such matters without inconvenience. It would have been like publishing ancient history. Nothing could have been more valuable.”
He next adverted to Sultan Selim III., to whom, he said, he once wrote: “Sultan, come forth from thy seraglio; place thyself at the head of thy troops, and renew the glorious days of thy monarchy.”
“Selim, the Louis XVI. of the Turks,” said the Emperor, “who was very much attached and very favourable to us, contented himself with answering, that the advice would have been excellent for the first Princes of his dynasty; but that the manners of those times were very different; and that such a conduct would, at present, be unseasonable, and altogether useless.”[useless.”]
The Emperor added, however, that nobody knew how to calculate, with certainty, the energy of the sudden burst, which might be produced by a Sultan of Constantinople, who was capable of placing himself at the head of his people, of infusing new spirit into them, and of exciting that fanatical multitude to action. At a later period, he observed, that, for his own part, if he had been able to unite the Mamelukes with his French, he should have considered himself the master of the world. “With that chosen handful, and the rabble,” he added, with a smile, “recruited on the spot, to be expended in the hour of need, I know nothing that could have resisted me. Algiers trembled at it.
“‘But should your Sultan,’ said, one day, the Dey of Algiers to the French Consul, ‘ever take it into his head to pay us a visit, what safety could we hope for? For he has defeated the Mamelukes.’ The Mamelukes,” observed the Emperor, “were, in fact, objects of veneration and terror throughout the East; they were looked upon as invincible until our time.”
The Emperor, while waiting for dinner in the midst of us, opened a book, which lay at his side on the couch; it was the Regency. He stigmatized it as one of the most abominable eras of our annals: and was vexed that it had been described with the levity of the age, and not with the severity of history. It had been strewed with the flowers of fashionable life, and set off with the colouring of the Graces, instead of having been treated with rigorous justice. The Regency, he observed, had been, in reality, the reign of the depravity of the heart, of the libertinism of the mind, and of the most radical immorality of every species. It was such, he said, that he believed all the horrors and abominations with which the manners of the Regent were reproached in the bosom of his own family; while he did not give credit to the stories told of Louis XV., who, although plunged in the foulest and most frightful debauchery, afforded, however, no grounds to justify his belief in such shocking and monstrous indulgencies; and he vindicated him very satisfactorily from certain imputations, which would have seriously affected the person of one of his (Napoleon’s) former aides-de-camp. He considered the epoch of the Regent to have been the overthrow of every kind of property, the destruction of public morals. Nothing had been held sacred either in manners or in principles. The Regent was personally overwhelmed with infamy. In the affair of the legitimate Princes, he had exhibited the most abject baseness, and committed a great abuse of authority. The King alone could authorize such a decision, and he, the Regent, had felt pleasure in gratuitously dishonouring himself in the person of his wife, the natural daughter of Louis XIV., whom he had found it his interest, however, to marry, while that King was on the throne.
6th.—As we wished to try the tent, which was just finished, the table was laid there, and we invited the English officers, who had superintended the work, to breakfast with us.
The Emperor sent for me to his apartment; he dressed himself, and, when he went out, I accompanied him to the bottom of the wood, where we walked for some time. He entered into the discussion of some important subjects.