"Divine Providence," said the pious injunction, "has decreed that in future we shall be the subjects of Napoleon the Great. The island of Elba, raised to so sublime an honour, receives the Lord's Anointed in its bosom. We order that a solemn Te Deum be sung by way of thanksgiving," etc.
Napoleon in Elba.
The Emperor had written to General Dalesme[231], commanding the French garrison, that he must make known to the people of Elba that "he had selected" their island for his residence in consideration of the gentleness of their manners and of their climate. He set foot on land at Porto-Ferrajo[232], amid the dual salute of the English frigate which had brought him and the batteries on shore. Thence he was taken under the parish canopy to the church, where the Te Deum was sung. The beadle, the master of ceremonies, was a short, fat man, who was unable to join his hands across his person. Napoleon was next conducted to the mayor's, where his lodging was prepared. They unfurled the new Imperial Standard, a white ground intersected by a red stripe strewn with three gold bees. Three violins and two basses followed him with scrapings of delight The throne, hastily erected in the public ball-room, was decorated with gilt paper and pieces of scarlet cloth. The actor's side of the prisoner's nature accommodated itself to these displays: Napoleon made a serious business of trifles, even as he used to amuse his Court with little old-time games inside his palace at the Tuileries, going out afterwards to kill men by way of pastime. He formed his Household: it consisted of four chamberlains, three orderly-officers, and two harbingers of the palace. He stated that he would receive the ladies twice a-week, at eight o'clock in the evening. He gave a ball. He took possession, for his own residence, of the pavilion intended for the engineers. Bonaparte was constantly meeting in his life the two sources from which it had issued: democracy and the royal power; his strength was derived from the citizen masses, his rank from his genius; and therefore you see him pass without effort from the market-square to the throne, from the kings and queens who crowded round him at Erfurt[233] to the bakers and oilmen who danced in his barn at Porto-Ferrajo. He had something of the people among princes, and of the prince among the people. At five o'clock in the morning, in silk stockings and buckled shoes, he presided over his masons in the island of Elba.
Established in his Empire, inexhaustible in iron since the days of Virgil,
Insula inexhaustis Chalybum generosa metallis[234],
Bonaparte had not forgotten the outrages to which he had lately been subjected; he had not renounced his intention of tearing off his winding-sheet; but it suited him to seem buried, only to make some appearance of a phantom around his monument. That is why he was eager, as though thinking of nothing else, to go down into his quarries of specular iron and adamant; one would have taken him for the ex-inspector of Mines of his former States. He repented of having once appropriated the revenue of the forges of "Ilva" to the Legion of Honour: 500,000 francs now seemed to him worth more than a blood-bathed cross on the breast of his grenadiers.
"What was I thinking of?" he said. "But I have issued many stupid decrees of that nature."
He made a commercial treaty with Leghorn and proposed to make another with Genoa. At all hazards, he began to make five or six furlongs of high-road and designed the sites of four large towns, just as Dido laid out the boundaries of Carthage. A philosopher who had seen too much of human greatness, he declared that he intended thenceforth to live like a justice of the peace in an English county: and notwithstanding, on climbing a height which overlooks Porto-Ferrajo, these words escaped him at the sight of the sea which flowed up on every side at the foot of the cliffs:
"The devil! It must be owned that my island is very small!"