"I had for some time remained in expectation, and in almost perfect solitude, when, at fifteen minutes before nine, an extraordinary noise that I heard outside announced to me the Emperor's arrival; and a few moments after I saw him appear, amidst cries of enthusiasm, borne on the arms of the officers who had escorted him from the island of Elba. The Emperor begged them earnestly to let him walk; but his entreaties were useless, and they bore him thus to the very door of his apartment, where they deposited him near me. I had not seen the Emperor since the day of his farewell to the National Guard in the great court of the palace; and in spite of the great agitation into which I was thrown by all this commotion, I could not help noticing how much stouter he had become.
"The Emperor had hardly entered his apartments than I was assigned to duty in the interior. Marshal Bertrand, who had just replaced General Excelmans in the command of the Tuileries, gave me an order to allow no one to enter without informing him, and to give him the names of all who requested to see the Emperor. One of the first to present himself was Cambaceres, who appeared to me even more pallid than usual. A short time after came the father of General Bertrand; and as this venerable old man attempted to pay his respects first to the Emperor, Napoleon said to him, 'No, monsieur! nature first;' and in saying this, with a movement as quick as his words, the Emperor, so to speak, threw him into the arms of his son. Next came Queen Hortense, accompanied by her two children; then, Count Regnault de Saint-Jean d'Angely, and many other persons whose names have escaped me. I did not see again those I announced to Marshal Bertrand, as they all went out by another door. I continued this duty till eleven o'clock in the evening, at which time I was relieved of my duties, and was invited to supper at an immense table of about three hundred covers. All the persons presented at the palace took their places at this table, one after the other. I there saw the Duke of Vicenza, and found myself placed opposite General Excelmans. The Emperor supped alone in his room with Marshal Bertrand, and their supper was by no means so splendid as ours, for it consisted only of a roast chicken and a dish of lentils; and yet I learned from an officer who fad attended him constantly since he left Fontainebleau, that his Majesty had eaten nothing since morning. The Emperor was exceedingly fatigued; I had opportunity to mark this each time his door was opened. He was seated on a chair in front of the fire, with his feet on the mantelpiece.
"As we all remained at the Tuileries, word was sent us about one o'clock that the Emperor had just retired, and that in case any soldiers should arrive during the night who had accompanied him, he had given orders that they should be on duty at the palace conjointly with the National Guard. The poor creatures were hardly in a condition to obey such an order. At two o'clock in the morning we saw two of them arrive in a most pitiable condition; they were perfectly emaciated, and their feet blistered. All that they could do was to throw themselves on their bags, on which they fell sound asleep; and they did not even awake while the duty of bandaging their feet was attended to in the room which they had reached with so much difficulty. All were eager to lavish every attention on them; and I admit that I have always regretted not having inquired the names of these two brave grenadiers, who inspired in all of us an interest I cannot describe.
"After retiring at one o'clock, the Emperor was on his feet at five o'clock in the morning; and the order was immediately given to the soldiers on half pay to hold themselves ready for a review, and at break of day they were ranged in three ranks. At this moment I was deputed to watch over an officer who was pointed out as suspicious, and who, it was said, had come from Saint-Denis. This was M. de Saint-Chamans. At the end of a quarter of an hour of arrest, which had nothing disagreeable in it, he was simply asked to leave. Meanwhile, the Emperor had descended from the palace, and passed through the ranks of the soldiers on half pay, speaking to each one, taking many of them by the hand, and saying to them, 'My friends, I need your services; I rely on you as you may rely on me.' Magic words on the lips of Napoleon, and which drew tears of emotion from all those brave soldiers whose services had been ignored for a year.
"From the morning the crowd increased rapidly on all the approaches to the Tuileries, and a mass of people assembled under the windows of the chateau, demanding with loud shouts to see Napoleon. Marshal Bertrand having informed him of this, the Emperor showed himself at the window, where he was saluted by the shouts which his presence had so often excited. After showing himself to the people, the Emperor himself presented to them Marshal Bertrand, his arm resting on the marshal's shoulder, whom he pressed to his heart with demonstrations of the liveliest affection. During this scene, which deeply affected all the witnesses, who cheered with all their might, officers, standing behind the Emperor and his friend, held above their heads banners surmounted by their eagles, of which they formed a kind of national canopy. At eleven o'clock the Emperor mounted his horse, and reviewed the various regiments which were arriving from every direction, and the heroes of the island of Elba who had returned to the Tuileries during the night. All seemed deeply impressed with the appearance of these brave men, whom the sun of Italy had tanned, and who had traveled nearly two hundred leagues in twenty days."
These are the curious details which were given to me by a friend; and I can guarantee the truth of his recital the same as if I myself had been an eye-witness of all that occurred during the memorable night of the 20th and 21st March, 1815. Continuing in my retreat during the hundred days, and long after, I have nothing to say which all the world would not know as well as I concerning this important epoch in the life of the Emperor. I have shed many tears over his sufferings at the time of his second abdication, and the tortures inflicted on him at St. Helena by the miserable Hudson Lowe, whose infamy will go down through the ages side by side with the glory of the Emperor. I will simply content myself by adding to the preceding a certain document which was confided to me by the former Queen of Westphalia, and saying a word in conclusion as to the destination I thought best to give to the first cross of the Legion of Honor which the First Consul had worn.
Princess Catharine of Wurtemberg, the wife of Prince Jerome, is, as is well known, a woman of great beauty, gifted at the same time with more solid qualities, which time increases instead of diminishing. She joins, to much natural intelligence, a highly cultivated mind, a character truly worthy of a sister-in-law of the Emperor, and carries even to enthusiasm her love of duty. Events did not allow her to become a great queen, but they have not prevented her remaining an accomplished wife. Her sentiments are noble and elevated; but she shows haughtiness to none, and all who surround her take pleasure in boasting of the charms of her kindness towards her household, and she possesses the happiest gift of nature, which consists in making herself beloved by every one. Prince Jerome is not without a certain grandeur of manner and formal generosity, which he learned while on the throne of Cassel, but he is generally very haughty. Although in consequence of the great changes which have taken place in Europe since the fall of the Emperor, Prince Jerome owes the comfortable maintenance which he still enjoys to the love of the princess, she does not any the less show a truly exemplary submission to his will. Princess Catharine occupies herself almost exclusively with her three children, two boys and one girl, all of whom are very beautiful. The eldest was born in the month of August, 1814. Her daughter, the Princess Mathilde, owes her superior education to the care her mother exercised over it; she is pretty, but less so than her brothers, who all have their mother's features.
After the description, which is not at all flattered, which I have just given of Princess Catharine, it may seem surprising that, provided as she is with so many solid qualities, she has never been able to conquer an inexplicable weakness regarding petty superstitions. Thus, for instance, she is extremely afraid to seat herself at a table where there are thirteen guests. I will relate an anecdote of which I can guarantee the authenticity, and which, perhaps, may foster the weakness of persons subject to the same superstitions as the Princess of Wurtemberg. One day at Florence, being present at a family dinner, she perceived that there were exactly thirteen plates, suddenly grew pale, and obstinately refused to take her seat. Princess Eliza Bacciochi ridiculed her sister-in-law, shrugged her shoulders, and said to her, smiling, "There is no danger, there are in truth fourteen, since I am enceinte." Princess Catharine yielded, but with extreme repugnance. A short time after she had to put on mourning for her sister-in-law; and the death of the Princess Eliza, as may well be believed, contributed no little to render her more superstitious than ever as to the number thirteen. Well! let strong minds boast themselves as they may; but I can console the weak, as I dare to affirm that, if the Emperor had witnessed such an occurrence in his own family, an instinct stronger than any other consideration, stronger even than his all-powerful reason, would have caused him some moments of vague anxiety.
Now, it only remains for me to render an account of the bestowal I made of the first cross of honor the First Consul wore. The reader need not be alarmed; I did not make a bad use of it; it is on the breast of a brave soldier of our old army. In 1817 I made the acquaintance of M. Godeau, a former captain in the Imperial Guard. He had been severely wounded at Leipzig by a cannon-ball, which broke his knee. I found in him an admiration for the Emperor so intense and so sincere, he urged me so earnestly to give him something, whatever it might be, which had belonged to his Majesty, that I made him a present of the cross of honor of which I have spoken, as he had long ago been decorated with that order. This cross is, I might say, a historical memento, being the first, as I have stated, which his Majesty wore. It is of silver, medium size, and is not surmounted with the imperial crown. The Emperor wore it a year; it decorated his breast for the last time the day of the battle of Austerlitz. From that day, in fact, his Majesty wore an officer's cross of gold with the crown, and no longer wore the cross of a simple member of the legion.
Here my souvenirs would end if, in re-reading the first volumes of my memoirs, the facts I have there related had not recalled to me some others which may be of interest. With the impossibility of presenting them in the proper order and connection, I have decided, in order that the reader may not be deprived of them, to offer them as detached anecdotes, which I have endeavored to class as far as possible, according to the order of time.