We went into the garden, when it had cleared up for a moment. The Emperor reverted to the conversation which he had yesterday with the Governor, in the Admiral’s presence, and again reproached himself with the violence of his expressions. “It would have been more worthy of me, more consistent and more dignified, to have expressed all these things with perfect composure; they would, besides, have been more impressive.” He recollected, in particular, a name which had escaped him as applied to Sir H. Lowe (scribe d’etat-major,) which must have shocked him, and the more so because it expressed the truth, and that, we know, is always offensive. “I have myself,” said the Emperor, “experienced that feeling in the island of Elba. When I ran over the most infamous libels, they did not affect me even in the slightest manner. When I was told or read, that I had strangled, poisoned, ravished; that I had massacred my sick; that my carriage had been driven over my wounded; I laughed out of commiseration. How often did I not then say to Madame: ‘Make haste, mother, come and see the savage, the man-tiger, the devourer of the human race; come and admire your child!’ But when there was a slight approach to truth, the effect was no longer the same; I felt the necessity of defending myself; I accumulated reasons for my justification, and even then, it never happened, that I was left without some traces of a secret torment. My dear Las Cases, such is man!”
The Emperor passed from this subject to his protest against the treaty of the 2nd of August, which had been read to us after dinner. I presumed to ask him, whether after noticing in a conspicuous manner the acknowledgment of his title of Emperor by the English, during their negotiations at Paris and Chatillon, he had not forgotten that, which they must have made on occasion of the treaty of Fontainebleau, and which, it struck me, was omitted. “It was,” he quickly replied, “done on purpose; I have nothing to do with that treaty; I disclaim it; I am far from boasting of it, I am rather ashamed of it. It was discussed for me. I was betrayed by N——, who brought it to me. That epoch belongs to my history, but to my history on a large scale. If I had then determined to treat in a sensible manner, I should have obtained the kingdom of Italy, Tuscany, or Corsica,—all that I could have desired. My decision was the result of a fault inherent in my character, a caprice on my part, a real constitutional excess. I was seized with a dislike and contempt of every thing around me; I was affected with the same feeling for fortune, which I took delight in defying. I cast my eye on a spot of land, where I might be uncomfortable and take advantage of the mistakes that might be made. I fixed upon the island of Elba. It was the act of a soul of rock. I am, no doubt, my dear Las Cases, of a very singular disposition, but we should not be extraordinary, were we not of a peculiar mould; I am a piece of rock, launched into space! You will not, perhaps, easily believe me, but I do not regret my grandeur, you see me slightly affected by what I have lost.”
“And why, Sire,” I observed, “should I not believe you? What have you to regret?... The life of man is but an atom in the duration of history, but with regard to your majesty, the one is already so full, that you scarcely ought to take any interest but in the other; if your body suffers here, your memory is enriched a hundred-fold. Had it been your lot to end your days in the bosom of uninterrupted prosperity, how many grand and striking circumstances would have passed away unknown! You yourself, Sire, have assured me of this, and I have remained impressed with the force of that truth. Not a day, in fact, passes in which those, who were your enemies, do not repeat with us, who are your faithful servants, that you are unquestionably greater here than in the Tuileries. And even on this rock, to which you have been transferred by violence and perfidy, do you not still command? Your jailors, your masters, are at your feet; your soul captivates every one that comes near you; you shew yourself what history represents St. Louis in the chains of the Saracens, the real master of his conquerors. Your irresistible ascendancy accompanies you here. We, who are all about you, Sire, entertain this opinion of you; the Russian commissioner expressed the same sentiment, we are assured, the other day, and it is felt by those who guard you. What have you to regret?”
On our return the Emperor, in spite of the storm, ordered his breakfast in the tent, and kept me with him. The rain did not penetrate; the only inconvenience was a considerable degree of damp; but the squalls of wind and rain whirled round us, and vented themselves far before us, towards the bottom of the valley; the spectacle was not destitute of beauty.
The Emperor retired about two o’clock; he sent for me some time afterwards to his cabinet. “I have,” said he, laying down the book, just read General S——n; he is a madman, a hair-brained fellow, he writes nonsense. He is, however, after all, readable and amusing; he cuts up, dissects, judges, and pronounces sentence upon men and things. He does not hesitate to give advice, in several instances, to Wellington, and asserts, that he ought to have made some campaigns under Kleber, &c. Kleber was no doubt a great general, but the notice taken of Soult is not precisely the best part of the book; he is an excellent director, a good minister at war.
“This S——n,” he continued, “deserted from the camp at Boulogne, carrying all my secrets to the English; that might have been attended with serious consequences. S——n was a general officer; his conduct was dreadful and unpardonable. But observe how a man, in the moment of revolution, may be a bad character, impudent, and shameless. I found him, on my return from the island of Elba; he waited for me with confidence, and wrote a long letter in which he attempted to make me his dupe. The English, he said, were miserable creatures; he had been a long time among them; he was acquainted with their means and resources, and could be very useful to me. He knew that I was too magnanimous, too great, to remember the wrongs I had suffered from him. I ordered him to be arrested, and as he had been already tried and condemned, I am at a loss to know why he was not shot. Either there was not time to carry his sentence into effect, or he was forgotten. There can be no forbearance, no indulgence for the general, who has the infamy to prostitute himself to a foreign power.”
The Grand Marshal came in; the Emperor, after continuing the conversation for some time, took him away to play at chess. He suffered much from the badness of the weather.
After dinner, he read Le Tartuffe; but he was so fatigued, that he could not get through it. He laid down the book, and, after paying a just tribute of eulogy to Moliere, he concluded in a manner which we little expected. “The whole of the Tartuffe,” he remarked, “is, unquestionably, finished with the hand of a master, it is one of the best pieces of an inimitable writer. It is, however, marked with such a character, that I am not at all surprised, that its appearance should have been the subject of interesting negotiations at Versailles, and of a great deal of hesitation on the part of Louis XIV. If I have a right to be astonished at any thing, it is at his allowing it to be performed. In my opinion, it holds out devotion under such odious colours; a certain scene presents so decisive a situation, so completely indecent, that, for my own part, I do not hesitate to say, if the comedy had been written in my time, I would not have allowed it to be represented.”
THE BARONESS DE S——, &C.
20th.—About four o’clock, I attended the Emperor, according to his orders, in the billiard-room. The weather still continued dreadful; it did not allow him to set his foot out of doors, and he was, he said, nevertheless, driven from his apartment and the saloon by the smoke. My looks told him, he said, that I was quite flustered; it was with the most lively indignation, and he wished to know the cause of it.