The Emperor, on rising from the dinner table, adverted to his recent protest against the treaty of the 2d of August. He expatiated with warmth on the subject, and remarked, while he walked rapidly about the apartment, that he intended to draw up another protest, on a more extensive and important scale, against the Bill that had been passed in the British Parliament. He would prove, he said, that the Bill was not a law, but a violation of every existing law. Napoleon was proscribed, and not judged by it. The English Parliament had done, not what was just, but what was deemed to be expedient; it had imitated Themistocles, without hearing Aristides. The Emperor then arraigned himself before all the nations in Europe, and proved that each would successively acquit him. He took a review of the different acts of his reign, and justified them all.
“The French and the Italians,” said he, “lament my absence; I carry with me the gratitude of the Poles, and even the late and bitter regrets of the Spaniards. Europe will soon deplore the loss of the equilibrium, to the maintenance of which my French empire was absolutely necessary. The Continent is now in the most perilous situation, being continually exposed to the risk of being overrun by Cossacks and Tartars. And the English,” said he in conclusion, “the English will deplore their victory at Waterloo! Things will be carried to such a length that posterity, together with every well-informed and well-disposed person among our contemporaries, will regret that I did not succeed in all my enterprises.”
In course of his remarks, the Emperor occasionally rose to a pitch of sublimity. I shall not follow him into all his details. He promised to dictate the observations he had made, and said that he had already sketched out a plan for his political defence, in fourteen paragraphs.
CATINAT; TURENNE; CONDÉ.—QUESTIONS RESPECTING THE GREATEST BATTLE FOUGHT BY THE EMPEROR; THE BEST TROOPS, &C.
28th.—The Emperor did not go out until four o’clock; he had spent three hours in the bath. The weather was very unpleasant, and in consequence he merely took a few turns in the garden. He had just written to inform the Governor that henceforth he would receive no strangers, unless they were admitted to Longwood by passes from the Grand Marshal, as in the time of Admiral Cockburn.
The Emperor proposed playing a game at chess; but, before he sat down to do so, he took up a volume of Fenelon. It was La Direction de Conscience d’un Roi. He read to us several articles, criticising them with considerable spirit and gaiety. At length he threw down the volume, saying that the name of an author had never influenced him in forming an opinion of his writings; that he always judged of works according to the sentiments with which they inspired him; being always equally willing to praise or to censure. He added that, in spite of the name of Fenelon, he had no hesitation in declaring that the work he had just looked through was a mere string of rhapsodies; and truly it would be difficult to refute this assertion.
After dinner, the Emperor conversed about the old marine establishment, and alluded to M. de Grasse, and his defeat on the 12th of April. He wished to learn some particulars on this subject; and he asked for the Dictionary of Sieges and Battles. He looked over it, and it afforded him matter for a multitude of observations. Catinat came under his consideration, and the remarks he made on that commander lowered him infinitely in our estimation. Napoleon said that he thought him very inferior to the reputation he enjoyed, after viewing the scenes of his operations in Italy, and reading his correspondence with Louvois. “Having risen from the tiers-état,” said he, “and being educated for the law, distinguished for urbanity of manners and moral integrity, affecting the practice of equality, residing at St. Gratien, at the gates of Paris, Catinat became the favourite of the literati of the capital and the philosophers of the day, who exalted him beyond his real merits. He was in no way comparable to Vendôme.”
The Emperor said, that he had endeavoured, in the same manner, to study the characters of Turenne and Condé, suspecting that they were also the objects of exaggerated eulogy; but that he was convinced those two men were fully entitled to all the commendation that has been bestowed on them. With regard to Turenne, he remarked that his intrepidity encreased in proportion as he acquired experience; as he grew old, he evinced greater courage than he seemed to possess in early life. The contrary was observable in Condé, who displayed so much dauntless valour at the commencement of his career.
Now that I am alluding to Turenne, Condé, and other distinguished men, I may mention, as a curious fact, that I never, by any chance, heard Napoleon utter the name of Frederick the Great. Yet many circumstances prove that Frederick held a high rank in Napoleon’s regard. The large silver watch, a kind of alarum used by that Prince, which hangs by the fire-place in the Emperor’s apartment at St. Helena;—the eagerness with which Napoleon, on his entrance into Potzdam, seized the sword of the Prussian hero, exclaiming, “Let those who will seek other spoil; I value this beyond millions!”—finally, his long and silent contemplation of the tomb of Frederick—sufficiently attest the deep interest which Napoleon attached to every thing connected with that sovereign.[[12]]
In the Dictionary of Sieges and Battles, which the Emperor was looking over to-day, he found his name mentioned in every page; but connected with anecdotes either totally false, or at least misstated. This led him to exclaim against the whole swarm of inferior writers, and their unworthy abuse of the pen. “Literature,” he said, “had become the food of the vulgar, while it ought to have been reserved exclusively for people of refined taste.