“Two or three years ago,” said I, “a clerk in the war office, a very worthy man, as far as I know, used to come to my house to give my son lessons in writing and in Latin. He had a daughter, whom he wished to make a governess, and begged us to recommend her, should an occasion present itself. Madame Las Cases sent for her; she was charming, and in every respect highly attractive. From that moment, Madame Las Cases invited her occasionally to her house, with the view of introducing her into the world, and obtaining some acquaintances for her who might prove useful. But, how strange! this young person, our acquaintance, our obliged friend, is actually at this moment the Baroness de S——, the wife of one of the Commissioners of the allied powers, who arrived nearly a month since, in the island.
“Your Majesty may judge of my surprise, and of all my joy at this singular freak of fortune. I am then about to have, I said to myself, positive, particular, and even secret information respecting every thing that interests me. Several days passed without any communication, but without any anxiety, and even with some satisfaction on my part. For, I thought, the greater the caution, the more I had to expect. At length, hurried on by my impatience, I sent three or four days ago my servant to Madame de S——; I had described her very properly, and, as an inhabitant of the island, he found no difficulty in gaining admittance. He returned soon with an answer from Madame de S——, that she did not know the person who had sent him. I might, under every circumstance, be still induced to think, that this was an excess of prudence, and that she was unwilling to place confidence in one unknown to her. But this very day, I received notice from the governor, not to attempt to form any secret connexion in the island; that I ought to be aware of the danger to which I exposed myself; and that the attempt with which he reproached me was not a matter of doubt; for he was put in possession of it by the very person to whom I had addressed myself. Your Majesty now knows what has confounded me. To find that so villainous a charge should come from a quarter where I had a right to expect some interest in my affairs, and even gratitude, has irritated me beyond measure; I am no longer the same person.”
The Emperor laughed in my face: “How little do you know of the human heart! What! her father was your son’s tutor, or something of that kind; she enjoyed your wife’s protection when she was in want of it, and she is become a German baroness! But, my dear Las Cases, you are the person whom she dreads most here, who lay her most under constraint; she will allege that she never saw your wife at Paris, and besides, this mischievous Sir Hudson Lowe may have been delighted with giving an odious turn to the thing; he is so artful, so malignant.” And he then began to laugh at me and my anger.
After dinner, the Emperor resumed his reading of the Tartuffe, which he had not finished yesterday, and there was enough left for to-day. The Emperor was quite dejected; the bad weather has a visible effect upon him.
CORVISART.—ANECDOTES OF THE SALOONS OF PARIS.
21st.—The weather as horrible as ever.—We are seriously incommoded with the wet in our apartments; the rain penetrates every where.
The governor’s secretary brought me a letter from Europe; it afforded a few moments of real happiness; it contained the recollections and good wishes of my dearest friends. I went and read it to the Emperor.
The Emperor suffered seriously from the badness of the weather. He went to his saloon about four o’clock; he thought that he was feverish, and found himself much depressed; he called for some punch, and played a few games at chess with the grand marshal. The doctor is come from the town. The two vessels just arrived are from the Cape; one of them is the Podargus, which left Europe ten days after the Griffin; the other, a small frigate, on her way from India to Europe. There was, it was said, a letter for the Emperor Napoleon, but it was not delivered, and we did not know from whom it came.
After dinner it was said that the medicines in the island were exhausted, and it was remarked, that the Emperor could not be accused of having contributed to it. This led him to observe, that he did not recollect having ever taken any medicine. At the Tuileries, he had had three blisters at once, and even then he had not taken any. He received a serious wound at Toulon; it was, he said, like that of Ulysses, by which his old nurse knew him again; he had recovered altogether, without taking physic. One of us taking the liberty to say; “If your majesty had the dysentery to-morrow, would you still reject all kind of medicine?” The Emperor answered; “Now that I am tolerably well, I answer, yes, without hesitation; but if I were to be very ill, I should, perhaps, alter my mind, and should then feel that kind of conversion, which is produced on a dying man through the fear of the devil.” He again mentioned his incredulity in physic, but he did not think so, he said, of surgery. He had three times commenced a course of anatomy, but they had always been broken off by business and disgust. “On a certain occasion, and at the end of a long discussion, Corvisart, desirous of speaking to me, with his proofs in hand, was so abominably filthy as to bring a stomach, wrapped up in his pocket-handkerchief, to St. Cloud, and I was instantly compelled, at that horrible sight, to cast up all that I had in mine.”
The Emperor attempted, after dinner, to read a comedy, but he was so fatigued, and suffered so much, that he was forced to stop and retire about nine o’clock. He made me follow him, and as he felt no inclination to sleep, he said; “Come, my dear Las Cases, let us see; let us have a story about your fauxbourg Saint Germain, and let us endeavour to laugh at it, as if we were listening to the Thousand[Thousand] and One Nights’!”—“Very well, Sire; there was, formerly, one of your Majesty’s chamberlains, who had a grand-uncle, who was very old, very old indeed, ... and I remember your Majesty telling us the story of a heavy German officer, who, taken prisoner at the opening of the campaign in Italy, complained that a young conceited fellow had been sent to command against them, who spoiled the profession, and made it intolerable. Well! we had precisely his likeness among us; it was the old grand-uncle, who was still dressed nearly in the costume of Louis XIV. He showed off, whenever you sent accounts of any extraordinary achievements on the other side of the Rhine; your bulletins of Ulm and Jena operated upon him like so many revulsions of bile. He was far from admiring you. You also spoiled the profession, in his opinion. He had, he frequently said, made the campaigns under Marshal de Saxe, which indeed were prodigies in war, and had not been sufficiently appreciated. ‘War was, no doubt, then an art; but now!!!’ he remarked, shrugging up his shoulders.... ‘In our time we carried on war with great decorum; we had our mules; we were followed by our canteens; we had our tents; we lived well; we had even plays performed at head-quarters; the armies approached each other; admirable positions were occupied; a battle took place; a siege was occasionally carried on, and afterwards we went into winter-quarters, to renew our operations in the spring. That is,’ he exclaimed, with exultation, ‘what may be called making war! But now, a whole army disappears before another in a single battle, and a monarchy is overturned; a hundred leagues are run over in ten days; as for sleeping and eating, they are out of the question. Truly, if you call that genius, I am, for my own part, obliged to acknowledge, that I know nothing about it; and, accordingly, you excite my pity, when I hear you call him a great man.’”