With the health of Napoleon his mind sank also. Some fishes in a pond in the garden at Longwood had attracted his notice; a deleterious substance happened to mix with the water—they sickened and died. "Everything I love," said Napoleon, "everything that belongs to me—is stricken. Heaven and mankind unite to afflict me." Fits of long silence and profound melancholy were now frequent. "In those days," he once said aloud, in a reverie, "In those days I was Napoleon. Now I am nothing—my strength, my faculties forsake me—I no longer live, I only exist."
When Sir Hudson Lowe was made aware of the condition of the captive, he informed the government at home; and by his Majesty's desire, authority was immediately given for removing to St. Helena from the Cape, any medical officer on whom Napoleon's choice might fall. This despatch did not, however, reach St. Helena, until Napoleon had breathed his last.
About the middle of April, 1821, the disease assumed such an appearance, that Dr. Antommarchi became very anxious to have the advice of some English physician, and the patient at length consented to admit the visits of Dr. Arnott, already referred to. But this gentleman also was heard in vain urging the necessity of medical applications. "Quod scriptum scriptum," once more answered Napoleon; "our hour is marked, and no one can claim a moment of life beyond what fate has predestined."
From the 15th to the 25th of April, Napoleon occupied himself with drawing up his last will—in which he bequeathed his orders, and a specimen of every article in his wardrobe, to his son. On the 18th he gave directions for opening his body after death, expressing a special desire that his stomach should be scrutinised, and its appearances communicated to his son. "The vomitings," he said, "which succeed one another without interruption, seem to show that of all my organs the stomach is the most diseased. I am inclined to believe it is attacked with the disorder which killed my father—a scirrhus in the pylorus—the physicians of Montpelier prophesied it would be hereditary in our family." He also gave directions to the priest Vignali as to the manner in which he wished his body to be laid out in a chambre ardente (a state-room lighted with torches). "I am neither an atheist," said Napoleon, "nor a rationalist; I believe in God, and am of the religion of my father. I was born a Catholic, and will fulfil all the duties of that church, and receive the assistance which she administers."
On the 3rd of May it became evident that the scene was near its close. The attendants would fain have called in more medical men; but they durst not, knowing his feelings on this head: "Even had he been speechless," said one of them, "we could not have brooked his eye." The last sacraments of the church were now administered by Vignali. He lingered on thenceforth in a delirious stupor. On the 4th the island was swept by a tremendous storm, which tore up almost all the trees about Longwood by the roots. The 5th was another day of tempests; and about six in the evening, Napoleon—having pronounced the words "tête d'armée," passed for ever from the dreams of battle.
On the 6th of May the body being opened by Antommarchi, in the presence of five British medical men, and a number of the military officers of the garrison, as well as Bertrand and Montholon, the cause of death was sufficiently manifest. A cancerous ulcer occupied almost the whole of the stomach.
Napoleon desired in his will, that his body should be buried "on the banks of the Seine; among the French people, whom he had loved so well." Sir Hudson Lowe could not, of course, expect the King of France to permit this to take place; and a grave was prepared among some weeping willows beside a fountain, in a small valley called Slane's, very near to Longwood. It was under the shade of these willows that the Exile had had his favourite evening seat; and it was there he had been heard to say, that if he must be interred in St. Helena, he would prefer to lie.
The body of the Emperor, clad in his usual uniform, was now exposed to the public view, and visited accordingly by all the population of the island. The soldiers of the garrison passed the couch slowly, in single file; each officer pausing, in his turn, to press respectfully the frozen hand of the dead. On the 8th, his household, the governor, the admiral, and all the civil and military authorities of the place, attended him to the grave—the pall spread over his coffin being the military cloak which he wore at Marengo. The road not being passable for carriages, a party of English grenadiers bore Napoleon to his tomb. The admiral's ship fired minute guns, while Vignali read the service of his church. The coffin then descended amidst a discharge of three volleys from fifteen cannon; and a huge stone was lowered over the remains of one who needs no epitaph.
Napoleon confessed more than once at Longwood that he owed his downfall to nothing but the extravagance of his own errors. "It must be owned," said he, "that fortune spoiled me. Ere I was thirty years of age, I found myself invested with great power, and the mover of great events." No one, indeed, can hope to judge him fairly, either in the brilliancy of his day or the troubled darkness of his evening, who does not task imagination to conceive the natural effects, on a temperament and genius so fiery and daring, of that almost instantaneous transition from poverty and obscurity to the summit of fame, fortune, and power. The blaze which dazzled other men's eyes, had fatal influence on his. He began to believe that there was something superhuman in his own faculties, and that he was privileged to deny that any laws were made for him. Obligations by which he expected all besides to be fettered, he considered himself entitled to snap and trample. He became a deity to himself; and expected mankind not merely to submit to, but to admire and reverence, the actions of a demon. Well says the Poet,