3d. Two millions and a half of francs annually to be paid, by the French government, in pensions to Josephine and other members of the Bonaparte family.
Napoleon hesitated when he received the formal ultimatum of the invading powers. He thought seriously of continuing the war, but the group of his personal followers had been rapidly thinned by desertion.
On the 11th of April he at length abandoned all hope and the next day executed an instrument called the treaty of Fontainebleau formally "renouncing for himself and his heirs, the thrones of France and Italy." Concerning the act Napoleon said, "I blush for it; what avails a treaty, since they will not settle the interests of France with me. If only my personal interests are concerned, there is no need of a treaty. I am conquered; I yield to the fate of arms. All I ask is, not to be accounted a prisoner of war." To all suggestions referring to his providing for his future wants he replied, "What matters it? A horse and a crown a day are all I want!"
"Napoleon, when he affixed his name to the abdication" says Baron Fain, his secretary, "made two or three scratches, and a dent, with the stump of his pen, or back of a knife, on the little, round, claw-footed, yellow table, on which it was signed. After the resignation of the Empire, he spent his time either in conversation in his apartment, or in a small English garden at the back of the palace.... Napoleon, during those days of distress, was seated alone for hours and amused himself by kicking a hole, a foot deep, with his heel, in the gravel beneath.... At the moment of Bonaparte's abdication, he remarked that instruments of destruction had been left in his way; he seemed to think that they were placed there purposely, in order that he might attempt his own life; and with a sardonic smile, said, 'Self-murder is sometimes committed for love—what folly! Sometimes for the loss of fortune—there it is cowardice! Another cannot live after he has been disgraced—what weakness! But to survive the loss of Empire, to be exposed to the results of one's contemporaries,—that is true courage!'"
[XV]
EXILE TO ELBA
The armies of the Allies had gradually pushed forward from Paris and now nearly surrounded Fontainebleau. When the last of the marshals had quitted Napoleon's presence for the night, after imperiously demanding his resignation, he revolted at the humiliations he had to undergo and disgusted at their cowardice, exclaimed: "These men have neither hearts nor entrails. I am conquered less by fortune than by the selfishness and ingratitude of my brothers-in-arms!" The same night, in a fit of despair he swallowed a weak poison contained in a bag that he had worn around his neck since 1808. The palace was aroused by his cries and Dr. Yvan hastily summoned by his valet. An antidote was given him and his life saved. To Caulaincourt he said an hour later: "God would not allow it. I could not die. Why did they not let me die? It is not the loss of my throne that makes existence insupportable to me. My military career is enough glory for one man. Do you know what is more difficult to bear than reverses of fortune? It is the baseness, the horrible ingratitude of men. I turned my head away with horror from the sight of their meanness and their contemptible selfishness, and I am disgusted with life. What I have suffered during the last three weeks, no one can tell."
Some months later, while at Elba, Napoleon ascribed his ruin entirely to Marmont, to whom he had confided some of his best troops, and a post of the greatest importance, as a person on whose devotion to him he could most depend. "For how could I expect to be betrayed," he said, "by a man whom I had loaded with kindness from the time he was fifteen years of age? Had he stood firm, I could have driven the Allies out of Paris, and the people there,—as well as throughout France,—would have risen, in spite of the Senate, if they had had a few troops to support them."