Napoleon allowed these visits with reluctance. He consented to receive Lord Amherst[397] on the latter's return from his Chinese embassy. Admiral Sir Pulteney Malcolm[398] he liked:
"Does your Government mean," he asked him one day, "to detain me upon this rock until my death's day?"
The admiral replied that he feared so.
"Then the term of my life will soon arrive."
"I hope not, monsieur; I hope that you will survive to record your great actions; they are so numerous that the task will ensure you a term of long life."
Napoleon did not take offense at this simple appellation of monsieur; he revealed himself at that moment through his real greatness. Fortunately for himself, he never wrote his life; he would have lessened it: men of that nature must leave their Memoirs to be told by the unknown voice which belongs to nobody and which issues from the nations and the centuries. To us every-day people alone is it permitted to talk of ourselves, because nobody would talk of us.
Captain Basil Hall[399] called at Longwood; Bonaparte remembered having seen the captain's father at Brienne:
"Your father," he said, "was the first Englishman that I ever saw; and I have recollected him all my life on that account."
He talked with the captain about the recent discovery of the island of Loo-Choo:
"The inhabitants have no arms," said the captain.