* * * * *
A striking refrain, running through all the discussions of those acts of his reign which had been under hottest fire, is this, “History will do me justice.” Time and again, after stating his explanations, reasons, motives, or justification, he comes back to the words, “History will do me justice.”
Considering all the circumstances, the confidence was sublime. His was a blasted name throughout the world. In France it was bad taste to mention him. By formal enactment of combined Europe he was an outlaw, beyond the pale of humanity, a pariah whom all were privileged to stone. Only one newspaper of the free press of England had dared to say a word for him when the government was making a prisoner out of a man it had not captured; only two members of Parliament dared protest against the wrong.
THE KING OF ROME
From the painting by Sir T. Lawrence
In France his followers, Ney and Labédoyère, had been shot, and Lavalette condemned. Reaction was rushing like an avalanche, and sweeping all before it. Royalist Catholics were outdoing in the White Terror the atrocities of the Red. Italy was her old self again, and Murat had looked into the muzzles of the Bourbon muskets, and had said, with the last flash of the old courage and pride, “Save my face, aim at my heart—fire!” Every pander who could distort or create was adding to the piles of books in which the Corsican monster was devoted to damnation here and hereafter. Yet, in spite of all, the captive was serenely at ease about his future.
“History will do me justice. My work will speak for itself. I shall soon be gone; but what I did, and what I attempted, will live for ages. My public improvements, my canals, harbors, roads, monuments, churches, hospitals, my school system, my code, my organization of the civil service, my system of finance, the manufactures that sprang up at my touch, the arts and sciences encouraged, the libraries founded, the triumphs of democracy which I organized and made permanent—these are my witnesses, and to posterity they will testify. Your Wellingtons and your Metternichs may dam the stream of liberal ideas, checking the current for the time; but the torrent will be only the stronger when it breaks.
“From the passions of to-day, I appeal to the sober judgment of to-morrow. Future generations will remember my intentions, consider my difficulties, and judge me leniently.”
This superb confidence sustained him so buoyantly that he was never more imperial in his pose than at St. Helena. When Lowe threatened to have his room forcibly entered each day in order that the jailer might know his prisoner was still there, the indomitable Corsican said, “I’ll kill the first man that tries it!” and before that courage of despair even Hudson Lowe drew back. When England demanded his sword, he had placed his hand upon it and looked the British officer in the eye with an expression that could not be misunderstood. The brave and generous Lord Keith, more chivalrous than his government, bowed to his captive, and retired without the sword.