‘Why have you come?’ asked Napoleon.
‘To see a great man.’
‘Rather to see a wild beast,’ rejoined Napoleon, who inquired whether Douglas had seen Murat or the Pope. The latter, said Napoleon, ‘is an obstinately resigned old man. I did not treat him properly. I did not go the right way to work with him.’ As to the state of France, Douglas reported that there was much enthusiasm for the Bourbons, though there were a few malcontents. ‘Yes,’ remarked Napoleon, ‘people who belong to whatever party pays them and make much stir in order to get money.’ Napoleon went on to complain of the treachery of his officers, of the pamphleteers who styled him a usurper, of his brothers for not having seconded him, and of the sovereigns who had abandoned him. Douglas reported that he could no longer mount a horse, and that he had fallen into profound apathy. Perhaps Napoleon intentionally gave him this erroneous impression, knowing that he was on his way to Paris, which he reached in January 1815.[293]
Lord William Bentinck, afterwards Viceroy of India, with a friend were sumptuously regaled, but we have no record of the conversation, and an English lady ‘of angelical beauty,’ whom Pons does not name, but who may have been Lady Jersey, for he says she showed the Emperor continued sympathy during the St. Helena captivity, was received with marked favour. When, on her return to London, she saw the Russian and Prussian sovereigns pass by, she said to the fashionable gathering round her, ‘Those men cannot seem imposing to persons who like me have had a close view of the Emperor Napoleon.’ Another visitor in September 1814 was John Barber Scott, of Bungay, Suffolk, ultimately a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, but then a graduate twenty-two years of age, who was accompanied by Major (Patrick?) Maxwell, R.A., Colonel (afterwards General) John Lemoine, R. A., Captain Smith, and Colonel Niel Douglas.
They encountered Napoleon as he was out riding, and on their saluting him he stopped for a few minutes to question them. They thought he looked more like a crafty priest than a hero. On being told that Scott was a Cantab he said, ‘What, Cambridge, Cambridge? Oh yes, you are a young man; you will be a lawyer. Eh, eh, you will be Lord Chancellor?’ Being told by Douglas that he belonged to a Highland regiment, Napoleon asked whether they did not wear kilts (jupes). On Douglas replying in the affirmative, Napoleon asked whether he had brought his kilt with him, as he should like to see it, but Douglas was unable to gratify his curiosity.[294]
Equally short, or even shorter, had been the interview of Sir Gilbert Starling and a Mr. Campbell.[295]
One visitor said he was as pleased to have spent nine days at Elba as if he had won £30,000. Napoleon, however, refused audiences to Englishmen whom he suspected of simple curiosity or of exultation at his fall.[296] When he went to Longone, the second town in the island, there were numerous English visitors, and it was remarked to him that they followed him wherever he went. He replied, ‘I am an object of curiosity; let them satisfy themselves. They will go home and amuse the gentlemans (sic) by describing my acts and gestures.’ He added in a sad tone, ‘They have won the game; they hold the dice.’
Yet so far from showing him disrespect, Pons states that these sixty visitors of all classes vied in extolling him. Pons also acknowledges that Colonel Campbell, though deputed by his Government to watch Napoleon, veiled his supervision so carefully that only the closest observation could detect it.[297]
But the principal visitor, and the only one invited to dinner, was Lord Ebrington, afterwards Earl of Fortescue and in 1839–1841 Viceroy of Ireland. He first waited on the Emperor at 8 P.M. on the 6th December, and for three hours walked up and down the room with him. ‘You come from France; tell me frankly,’ said Napoleon, ‘whether the French are satisfied.’ ‘Only so-so,’ replied Ebrington. ‘It cannot be otherwise,’ rejoined Napoleon; ‘they have been too much humiliated by the peace. The appointment of the Duke of Wellington as Ambassador must have seemed an insult to the army, as also the special attentions shown him by the King. If Lord Wellington had come to Paris as a visitor, I should have had pleasure in showing him the attentions due to his great ability, but I should not have liked his being sent to me as Ambassador.’
The justice of this remark is obvious. Napoleon extolled the House of Lords as the bulwark of the English constitution. He denounced the duplicity of the Emperor Alexander, expressed esteem for the Austrian Emperor, and spoke slightingly of the King of Prussia. ‘How should I be treated,’ he asked Ebrington, ‘if I went to England? Should I be stoned?’ Ebrington replied that he would run no risk, and that the irritation formerly existing against him was daily dying out. ‘I think, however,’ rejoined Napoleon, ‘that there would be some danger from your mob’—he used the English word—‘at London.’