He had visited his domain within a few hours; he wished to join to it a rock called Pianosa.
"Europe will accuse me," he said, laughing, "of already having made a conquest."
The Allied Powers made merry over the fact that they had in derision left him four hundred soldiers: he needed no more to bring them all back to the flag.
Napoleon's presence on the coast of Italy, which had witnessed the commencement of his glory and which retains his memory, agitated everybody. Murat was his neighbour; his friends, strangers secretly or publicly landed at his retreat; his mother and his sister, the Princess Pauline, visited him; they expected soon to see Marie-Louise and her son arriving. A woman[235] did in fact appear, with a child[236]; she was received with great mystery, and went to live in a secluded villa in the most remote corner of the island: on the shores of Ogygia, Calypso spoke of her love to Ulysses, who, instead of listening to her, thought of how to defend himself against the suitors. After a two days' repose, the Swan of the North put out to sea again, to land among the myrtles of Baja, carrying away her little one in her white yawl.
Madame Walewska.
If we had been less trustful, it would have been easy for us to perceive an approaching catastrophe. Bonaparte was too near his cradle and his conquests: his funeral island should have been more distant and surrounded by more waves. It is inexplicable how the Allies had come to think of banishing Napoleon to the rocks where he was to serve his apprenticeship in exile: was it possible to believe that at the sight of the Apennines, that when smelling the powder of the fields of Montenotte, Areola and Marengo, that on discovering Venice, Rome and Naples, his three fair slaves, his heart would not be seized with irresistible temptations? Had they forgotten that he had stirred up the earth and that he had admirers and debtors everywhere, all of whom were his accomplices? His ambition was deceived, not extinguished; misfortune and revenge rekindled its flames: when the Prince of Darkness from the verge of the created universe looked upon man and the world, he resolved to destroy them.
Before bursting forth, the terrible captive restrained himself for some weeks. In the huge public bank at faro which he was holding, his genius negociated a fortune or a kingdom. The Fouchés, the Guzmans d'Alfarache swarmed. The great actor had long made his police the home of melodrama and had reserved the upper stage for himself; he amused himself with the vulgar victims who disappeared through the trap-doors of his theatre.
Bonapartism, in the first year of the Restoration, passed on from simple desire to action in the measure as its hopes increased and as it became better acquainted with the weak character of the Bourbons. When the intrigue had been hatched without, it was hatched within, and the conspiracy became flagrant. Under the able administration of M. Ferrand[237], M. de Lavallette[238] undertook the correspondence: the mails of the Monarchy carried the despatches of the Empire. Concealment was abandoned; the caricatures foretold a desired return: one saw eagles entering by the windows of the Palace of the Tuileries, through the doors of which issued a flock of turkeys; the Nain jaune[239] or vert spoke of "plumes de cane." Warnings came from every side, and were disbelieved. The Swiss Government had gone out of its way to no purpose to inform His Majesty's Government of the intrigues of Joseph Bonaparte, who had retreated to the Pays de Vaud. A woman arriving from Elba gave the most circumstantial details of what was happening at Porto-Ferrajo, and the police sent her to prison. People held for certain that Napoleon would not venture any attempt before the dissolution of the Congress and that, in any case, his views would turn upon Italy. Others, still better advised, prayed that the "Little Corporal," the "Ogre," the "Prisoner," might land on the French coast; that would be too great a stroke of luck; they would settle him at one blow! M. Pozzo di Borgo[240] declared at Vienna that the delinquent would be strung up to the nearest tree. Were it possible to have certain papers, one would there find the proof that, as early as 1814, a military conspiracy was contrived and went side by side with the political conspiracy which the Prince de Talleyrand was conducting at Vienna, at Fouché's instigation. Napoleon's friends wrote to him that, if he did not hasten his return, he would find his place taken at the Tuileries by the Duc d'Orléans[241]: they imagine that this revelation served to hurry the Emperor's return. I am convinced of the existence of these plottings, but I also believe that the determinative cause which decided Bonaparte was simply the nature of his genius.
Bonapartist intrigues.
The conspiracy of Drouet d'Erlon[242] and Lefebvre-Desnoëttes had broken out. A few days before those generals rose in arms, I was dining with M. le Maréchal Soult, who had been appointed Minister of War on the 3rd of December 1814: a simpleton was describing Louis XVIII.'s time of exile at Hartwell; the marshal listened; to each detail he answered with the words: