Sir Hudson may have smiled then, and may have kept on smirking as long as Napoleon lived. Nothing seemed less likely than that the prophetic words of the prisoner would come true. But there came a time when Sir Hudson did not smile. When death had released the prisoner, and the faithful companions of his years of misery went home and told their story,—O’Meara in England, Las Casas and Montholon in France,—Sir Hudson did not smile; for all Europe rang with his name, and all generous hearts condemned him. He turned to British courts for vindication, and did not get it. He applied to the English ministers for high, permanent employment and liberal pension, and he got neither the one nor the other. Young Las Casas invited him to fight, and he did not fight. He dropped into a contempt which was so deep and so universal that even Wellington, in effect, turned his back upon the creature he had used, having no further need for just such a man.
“You make me smile, sir,” said amused Sir Hudson, when the shabbily clad, prematurely decrepit man, standing on the hearth of his dismal room, prophesied his political resurrection and his final triumph over his enemies. Had Castlereagh heard, he also would have smiled, not foreseeing that ghastly climax to political prostitution, when, after a lifetime of truckling to royalism, and of doing its foulest work, he should find the whole world turn black, should cut his own throat, and be followed to his tomb by the hoots of an English mob!
Wellington, too, would have been amused at hearing the prisoner’s prophecy; would have thought Napoleon insane, not foreseeing the perilous times in England when the progress of liberalism would break the line of his Tory opposition; would win triumphs for reform in spite of his threat that he would have his dragoons “sharp grind their sabres as at Waterloo.” With the windows of his London home smashed by a British mob, with millions of liberals shouting demands for better laws, so fiercely that even Wellington gave up trust in those sharp-ground swords, there came a day when the Iron Duke may have remembered the prophet of St. Helena, and read the words again—without the smile.
“In a few years you and all the others will be buried in the dust of oblivion; but the Emperor will live forever, the ornament of history, the star of civilized nations!”
It was a proud boast, and proudly has time made it good. In a few years the Bourbons had played out their shabby parts on the throne of France, and had gone into final and hopeless exile, “unwept, unhonored, and unsung.”
Liberalism had risen from defeats, and made its will supreme. Both in England and in France the Old Order had passed away, principles more enlightened prevailed. A new day had dawned, not cloudless nor free from storm, but better and brighter than 1815 or 1821. In the year of our Lord 1840, the thought of the two great nations turned to the grave at St. Helena. France asked, and England gave—whom? The Emperor! Not “Bonaparte” nor “General Bonaparte,” save in the minds of the very small and the exceedingly venomous; but Napoleon, “the Emperor and king.”
The grave at St. Helena was opened; the perfectly preserved face, beautiful in death, uncovered amid sighs and tears; and then the body, taken away to be entombed “upon the banks of the Seine in the midst of the people I have so much loved,” was received on board a royal ship, by a prince of the Bourbon house of Orleans, with masts squared, flags flying, cannon booming, drums beating, and every note of triumph swelling the pomp of that imperial reception. With a vast outpouring of the people, France welcomed the greatest Frenchman home.
“Truth cuts through the clouds; shines like the sun; and like the sun it is immortal!” Sublime confidence, sublimely justified!
“You make me smile, sir,” said Lowe; but that was many years since. It is 1840 now, and Napoleon’s turn has come.
From king to peasant, all France starts up to meet her returning hero. He comes back to a throne which none dispute. He comes back to a dominion no Marmont can betray. Allied kings will league themselves in vain to break that imperial supremacy. No Talleyrand or Fouché or Bourmont can find for treachery a leverage to overthrow that majestic power. No. It is secure in a realm which envy and malice and ignoble passion may invade, but cannot conquer. It has linked itself with things immortal; and for this imperial career and fame there can be no death.