“I have wrote ‘love,’ and must confess to you, my Pen, that it startles me when I see it in black upon the white paper; and yet I suppose it is so. And why should I not love? It is the purest, I am sure, of human feelings, such love as mine: God knows I would die for Emma, as I would die for my country. I pray that I may never be the villain to her. There has been love, I know, perfectly pure between a man and woman, which has yet been most disastrous for the man, if not for his country also. But, thank Heaven, this is not so with Emma. It has been entirely for the advancement of our country, of which I have been permitted to be the instrument. Without that wonderful woman we should never have got to my battle at all: it was she who secured us our supplies at Syracuse; a very little malevolence might have turned the sea into the drinking water, and sent the provisions out of reach into the interior. And now it is she who is working upon the innate slothfulness, I might say cowardice, and irresponsibility of those who administer this unhappy kingdom, to support its noble Queen in that active policy against the French which will lead to so much glory and send that lying and apostate race, the enemies of mankind, packing out of the Peninsula. In after days no one shall say that Nelson was dragged down by his friendship for Emma, or wiled from his duty into hanging attendance, but rather that it was she who inspired him to fresh exertions and had no thought but for his country.
“All this passed through my mind in that short coach-drive, as she laid her cool hand anxiously upon my lately-heated head, and reassured herself that there was no fever in my pulse.
“At the dinner, she was on my right hand, I on Her Majesty’s right hand. Her Majesty is a noble woman, a true daughter of the great Empress. A masculine intelligence; a man’s courage, vigour and decision; of which by all accounts there is much need, for the King, though a man of great stature and bodily strength, and with plenty of mere bravery, has no thought for the morrow, nor indeed for his kingdom except as an institution to supply him with plenty of wild beasts for the chase and a sufficiency of money, which he never finds sufficient, to keep his friends, if one may call them such, round him. He is not even faithful to that noble woman; and she, with a fine scorn, akin to pity, condones his infidelity in return for his refraining from injuring his kingdom, as he would if he interfered with her wise counsels. For Ferdinand would treat politics as he treats his ducats—squander them for the gratification of the unworthy whim of the moment. He is indeed a despicable man.
“The Queen has her softer moments, too; she is beautiful, and can be very tender. The first time that we were alone, when I looked for a grateful Queen condescending to the Admiral who had led the allies of her country to conquest, I found a weeping girl. I do not mean that she is young—she is by this past forty—but at that moment she was a girl back in her Austrian home with her unfortunate sister, the lovely martyr Marie Antoinette, whom those fiends insensately murdered. I could see that they were, as it were, girls together again in their childhood’s home. Then, all in a moment, Marie Antoinette had been for years Queen of France, and murdered! I knew all this, though I could not translate the burning words which she poured into my ear in a passion of grief that turned into a passion of triumph—for suddenly tears and grief were swept from that inspired face, and she hailed me avenger of the martyr.
“From that moment she was my intimate and affectionate friend; she would have me not treat her as a Queen, but rather as a well-loved lady of my acquaintance to whom I had rendered great service, and who had therefore admitted me to the footing of a relation.
“She has divined, I feel certain, the respect that I feel for Emma, and my admiration for her rare graces of mind—and I may say to you, Pen, of person—for during the banquet she said to me, ‘You look after dear Lady Hamilton: my kingdom owes everything to her after you.’ And she herself was most condescending to Tom Troubridge, who stood the fire. He is the finest sailor in His Majesty’s Service, and not to be swayed either by royal condescension or considerations of personal friendship, when—to give his expression, which means more to him than any officer engaged in the late battle—he is sounded.
“I could not say exactly what our conversation tended to at the banquet; I believe I talked better than I ever talked before. A good listener can inspire conversation. I do not know if an extraordinary desire to please fosters or chills it; I found myself talking on about myself. Perhaps the general tendency of our conversation was at first directed to the models in history upon which I had based my strategy and endeavoured to mould my conduct.
“From this the conversation must have wandered to an interchange—a recognition, almost an enumeration of signs of sympathy between us. I never found a woman so sympathetic, so completely the ideal of the feminine influence which should inspire a man. In this part of the conversation I do not remember that we actually used many words—it was more as if atoms were flying between us; and all the time there were those eyes looking like a Madonna’s from that saintly head, and that wonderful smile with half-parted lips.
“After the banquet, when we were in the reception-room with Her Majesty and the rest of the company, she went to the window, and flinging open the shutters, painted in the new Pompejan way, let in a flood of moonlight, and stepped out on to the broad terrace, looking in her white robes (Emma is fond of white) like a statue of a goddess against the glittering amethyst of the sky. I followed her, and gazed where she pointed over the black shining mirror of sea on which the moonlight lay in a great silver shaft; but I had barely time to note the little red glow in the rifted head of Vesuvio, and the great cone of Monte St. Angelo, when she said—‘Not now, Nelson, with all these magnetic human hearts so near us. I could walk for ever with you in a scene like this, but I feel the Mesmer attraction broken by those disturbing currents.’ Then she tripped quickly back into the presence-chamber, with the girlishness which is so much part of her. And then we joined my officers, who, in spite of the very marked friendliness of Her Majesty, were all collected in the exact centre of the room, at the point farthest from the Queen and her ladies, at one end, and the politicians, who ruin the country, at the other. They were better at the French than at court: they did not take naturally to this hobby-nobbying with Royalty. They were not like Emma, who up to this had never—except when we were for a brief visit to Naples—had any great acquaintance with His Majesty’s officers, but now it seemed as if she were talking privately to every single man of them at the same time. She is a host in herself.
“We stayed on late; for, going up to the Queen to pay our respects before leaving, we were by her detained, though my officers took their leave earlier, and when we entered My Lady’s coach to drive back to the Embassy the moon was down.