Eustace, the Catholic priest, likewise gives no hint of another overturn, yet his visits of 1790 and 1802 should have taught him the instability of French politics. Moreover, a sentry told him that the Emperor had in ten years done more to embellish Paris than the Bourbons in a century, and that had he reigned ten years longer he would have made it the finest city in the world. Jones, chaplain on board the Blenheim at anchor off Marseilles, was more excusable in regarding the fall of Napoleon as definitive, yet the very parallel which he drew in his 29th May sermon between the English and the French Restoration might have reminded him that 1660 was reversed by 1688. Weston, however, was struck not by any feeling in favour of Napoleon, but by the sarcasms heaped on him; and Shepherd, though he doubted the allegiance of the army, thought the mass of the people friendly to the Bourbons. The smallest spark amid so much inflammable matter might, he knew, produce an extensive conflagration. Some of the numerous pamphlets on Napoleon which, pending the institution of a censorship, were freely hawked in the streets, were the work of admirers, and the Grand Duke Constantine heard Louis XVIII. gravely reply, when the rest of the royal family had been disparaging Napoleon, ‘Napoleon has done wonders for the glory and welfare of France, and if I can render her happy it will be by following the documents which he has left. I should like to have as good a head as he whose chair I am occupying and whose table is serving me to write at, for I feel myself inferior to him.’[291] But even pessimists, while apprehending a revolution, had no fear of Napoleon’s return.
Return however he did, and those Englishmen who had visited him at Elba cannot have been among the most startled. As early as the 29th July, less than three months after Napoleon’s arrival in his little realm, General Spallannchi reported from Florence that some Englishmen had gone out of curiosity to Elba but had returned in ill-humour, the fallen monarch having barely allowed them to see him and that only in his garden. It seems from the statement of Vice-Consul Innes that the party numbered seven, including one lady, and that after being kept a long time waiting for an answer the garden interview was assigned them for the next day. A Warwickshire man who had passed through Paris and whose letter, intercepted by the Leghorn police, was signed ‘Richard,’ evidently his Christian name, sailed from Leghorn with his sister on the 24th November, but was told that Napoleon refused to receive curiosity-mongers. Not easily to be foiled, however, he made a second voyage and on alighting at an hotel at Porto Ferrajo on the 2nd December found covers laid for thirty Corsican functionaries in honour of the anniversary of Napoleon’s coronation in 1804. Such a celebration did not argue renunciation of empire. On the following day he was allowed an audience, but nothing having been said about his sister he had to leave her outside. Napoleon, whom he found standing in a small room, advanced with an affable air and asked, ‘Where do you come from?’
‘Warwickshire.’
‘I do not remember the name.’
‘It is in the very centre of England.’
‘What is your occupation?’
‘General commerce, but chiefly manufactures.’
‘Do you find much custom in Italy?’
‘Tolerable.’
‘None in France, eh?’