Her help, any help, was urgent, for that year darkened down from the high hopes of Toulon into grave alarms. The French developed a force more terrible than any discovery of gun or bomb—a man, Napoleon, with all his mighty brain turned upon the destruction of England, and all his devastating energy centred on the means to be adopted—and excepting Nelson, it may well be that there was no Englishman of the day who realized that the Mediterranean was the keystone of the bridge over which he must pass either to world dominion or to ruin.
For Emma, it possessed her. Forgotten were all the Attitudes, the gaieties, the little schemes for pomp and pleasure. She lived but for news of the Fleet; a letter to Sir William from Nelson, or a less guarded one to herself, since that was the safer channel, made up her day’s excitement, and her interviews with the Queen her daily bread. Excitement had always been her native atmosphere. It wearied and aged Sir William; she throve luxuriant. As to the Queen, she could not do without her. Emma was her “chère amie,” “Emma carissima,” and her warmth was repaid in kind.
“My charming Queen!” she wrote to Greville. “Everything one can wish, the best mother, wife, and friend in the world. I live constantly with her and have done so intimately for two years, and if you hear any lyes about her, contradict them, and if you should see a cursed book written by a vile French dog with her character in it, don’t believe one word. No person can be as charming as the Queen. If I was her daughter she could not be kinder to me and I love her as my own soul.”
That was Emma all over—the passionate partisanship which saw nothing but divinity in a friend, nothing but devilry in a foe. And if with all this, there mingled a little feudal romance in favour of the daughter, mother and wife of sovereigns, can the child of the people, herself all romance, be blamed very severely?
Sir William overflowed with these praises in private and, smiling a little at certain reminiscences of his own, would beseech Emma to believe the Queen a little lower than the angels, and besought in vain, and then reflecting philosophically that this was at all events a driving force which spared him much trouble and probably would do more good than harm, betook himself to his vases and gems once more. Emma could have trounced him sometimes but for her affection. His coolness almost drove her mad. But she nursed him tenderly through an anxious illness, and that more than once.
And things grew steadily worse. Napoleon was proving himself statesman as well as warrior, and a terrible fear gained ground that the mean-minded King of Spain would finally throw in his lot with the French Jacobins.
He had excuse for all about him the coalition of kings was breaking up and dissolving into the republics of a day. Austria trembled, Prussia fell off; even the steadfast England wavered.
There was a rumour of orders to evacuate the Mediterranean which caused the Queen and Emma to look at each other in silent despair. If that order were fulfilled, alas for the Two Sicilies! The Little Englanders of the day were slowly dominating the home situation and Nelson, chafing in the Mediterranean, wrote:
“Till this minute it has been usual for the allies of England to fall from her, but till now she never was known to desert her friends whilst she had the power of supporting them.”
And Buonaparte stormed Italy. Northern Italy lay at his feet, conquered, bound, plundered of her ancient glories of statues, pictures, the jewels that most adorned her, and he returned to the Directory in France the most famous general of modern times. They talked of Cæsar, Hannibal, cast in the shade for ever. And so the years went by.