“I entreat your Lordship to reconsider my case, and not to form an opinion upon my papers, without having first received from me the explanations you may require; and which I shall ever be most ready to afford. I affirm beforehand that, whatever difference of opinion and feeling may be found in them, there is not one that will not bear the test of a judicial investigation or of a friendly discussion. They contain nothing possessing any degree of interest in state matters, and no political secrets. I never possessed any documents of that kind, and if I had, opportunities would not have been wanting to have put them out of the way long before this.
“It would perhaps be the moment to speak also to your Lordship about the papers which have been taken from me at St. Helena, as well as respecting many other subjects to which I shall have to refer, either with your Lordship or Lord Bathurst; but the short space of time that I am allowed, and the confusion of ideas produced by circumstances so sudden and unforeseen, oblige me to defer doing so to some future period.
“I shall anxiously await the answer which your Lordship may be pleased to give me; but where I know not; most probably at Brussels, if I am allowed to remain there.
“I have the honour,” &c.
I was put on board a packet, and we sailed for Ostend; and, as I have now and then taken the liberty to speak of physical sufferings, I shall be forgiven, if, in order to afford a more correct idea of what I must have suffered during my long passage, I observe here that, notwithstanding the hundred days which I had just passed at sea, I still happened to be sick again on board this packet, although the weather was not absolutely bad. This was undoubtedly very ridiculous, but no less true.
The next day I got to Ostend, and landed without any observation having been made to me by any person. I again thought that this time my misfortunes were at an end, and that I had recovered my liberty; but I was again mistaken; persecutions of another kind were, on the contrary, going to begin: however, I had every reason to be satisfied with the first moments of my residence.
I had not been long at the inn before an agent of the local authorities came and told me, without my being able to guess how I had been already found out, that he had received orders to watch over me, and that he had immediately come to ask me in what manner I wished him to fulfil his instructions.
I had not been accustomed to such polite manner for a length of time, and I made this observation to him; adding, that the step he had taken was quite sufficient to induce me to resign myself with entire confidence to whatever he might wish to do with me; and, as his politeness had led to a prolongation of the conversation between us, which seemed greatly to excite his curiosity, he soon told me that he was going to put a question to me which was indiscreet, no doubt, and perhaps improper; but that he could not resist his desire of being informed whether it was true that I had left Napoleon because he was so much soured by misfortune that it was impossible to live with him; for the English ministerial papers had circulated a thousand reports respecting me, one more ridiculous than the other. I replied to him with a smile, “Sir, if I had any thing to say against Napoleon, if I had the least subject of complaint to adduce against him, be assured that you would not have to guard me at this moment, and that I should be far from being ill treated any where.” Upon which he exclaimed in his turn, striking his forehead, that such was the answer which ought to have suggested itself to his mind. His attentions towards me after this explanation became still more marked; and, having learnt from me that it was my intention to go to Brussels, he imposed no other condition to the uncontrolled liberty which he left me than that of not taking my departure without informing him of it, assuring me at the same time that a determination respecting me could not be delayed twenty-four hours longer, as a courier had been despatched to the Governor of the province, whose return would, in all probability, set me entirely at liberty.
I took advantage of the delay, to which I was thus obliged to submit, to write to the Ministers of the Police of France and of the Netherlands, respectively, concerning the situation in which I was henceforth to be placed.
To the French Minister I wrote in the following manner.