Napoleon had not the satisfaction to know the interest which his Majesty took in his illness, which would probably have afforded him some gleam of consolation. The tenor of the letter might, perhaps, have induced him to think, that his own system of pertinacious contest with the authorities under whose charge he was placed, had been so far injudicious, as to lead to doubts of the reality of the disorder under which he was dying; and had therefore been one great cause of intercepting the sympathy, and perhaps the relief, which must otherwise have extended itself to a situation so well deserving of commiseration.
LAST ILLNESS.
Towards the end of March the disease assumed a character still more formidable, and Dr. Antommarchi became desirous of obtaining a consultation with some of the English medical men. The Emperor's aversion to their assistance had been increased by a well-meant offer of the governor, announcing that a physician of eminence had arrived at the island, whom he therefore placed at General Buonaparte's devotion.[280] This proposal, like every other advance on the part of Sir Hudson Lowe, had been received as a meditated injury; "He wants to deceive Europe by false bulletins," said Napoleon; "I will not see any one who is in communication with him."[281] To refuse seeing every physician but his own, was certainly an option which ought to have been left in Napoleon's choice, and it was so left accordingly. But in thus obstinately declining to see an impartial medical man, whose report must have been conclusive respecting his state of health, Napoleon unquestionably strengthened the belief, that his case was not so desperate as it proved to be.
At length the Ex-Emperor consented that Dr. Antommarchi should consult with Dr. Arnott, surgeon of the 20th regiment.[282] But the united opinion of the medical gentlemen could not overcome the aversion of Napoleon to medicine, or shake the belief which he reposed in the gloomy doctrines of fatalism. "Quod scriptum scriptum," he replied in the language of a Moslem; "All that is to happen is written down. Our hour is marked, and it is not in our power to claim a moment longer of life than Fate has predestined for us."[283]
Dr. Antommarchi finally prevailed in obtaining admittance for Dr. Arnott into the apartment and presence of the patient, who complained chiefly of his stomach, of the disposition to vomit, and deficiency of the digestive powers. He saw him, for the first time on 2d April, 1821, and continued his visits regularly. Napoleon expressed his opinion that his liver was affected. Dr. Arnott's observations led him to think, that though the action of the liver might be imperfect, the seat of the disease was to be looked for elsewhere. And here it is to be remarked, that Napoleon, when Dr. Antommarchi expressed doubts on the state of his stomach, had repelled them with sharpness, though his own private belief was, that he was afflicted with the disease of his father. Thus, with a capricious inconsistency, natural enough to a sick bed, he communicated to some of his retinue his sense of what disease afflicted him, though, afraid perhaps of some course of medicine being proposed, he did not desire that his surgeon should know his suspicions.[284] From the 15th to the 24th of April, Napoleon was engaged from time to time in making his testamentary bequests, of which we shall have occasion to make some mention hereafter, as illustrative of his peculiar character and sentiments. On the day last mentioned, he was greatly exhausted by the fatigue of writing, and showed symptoms of over-excitation. Among these may be safely included, a plan which he spoke of for reconciling all religious dissensions in France, which he said he had designed to carry into effect.
As the strength of the patient gradually sunk, the symptoms of his disease became less equivocal, until, on the 27th April, the ejection of a dark-coloured fluid gave farther insight into the nature of the malady. Dr. Antommarchi persevered in attributing it to climate, which was flattering the wish of the patient, who desired to lay his death upon his confinement at St. Helena; while Dr. Arnott expressed his belief that the disease was the same which cut off his father in the pure air of Montpellier. Dr. Antommarchi, as usually happens to the reporter of a debate, silenced his antagonist in the argument, although Dr. Arnott had by this time obtained the patient's own authority for the assertion. Upon the 28th of April, Napoleon gave instructions to Antommarchi, that after his death his body should be opened, but that no English medical man should touch him, unless in the case of assistance being absolutely necessary, in which case he gave Antommarchi leave to call in that of Dr. Arnott. He directed that his heart should be conveyed to Parma, to Maria Louisa; and requested anxiously that his stomach should be particularly examined, and the report transmitted to his son. "The vomitings," he said, "which succeed one another without interruption, lead me to suppose that the stomach is, of all my organs, the most diseased; and I am inclined to believe that it is attacked with the same disorder which killed my father—I mean a scirrhus in the pylorus." On the 2d May, the patient returned to the same interesting subject, reminded Antommarchi of his anxiety that the stomach should be carefully examined. "The physicians of Montpellier had announced that the scirrhus in the pylorus would be hereditary in my family. Their report is, I believe, in the hands of Louis. Ask for it, and compare it with your own observations, that I may save my son from the sufferings I now experience."
DEATH.
During the 3d May, it was seen that the life of Napoleon was drawing evidently to a close; and his followers, and particularly his physician, became desirous to call in more medical assistance;—that of Dr. Shortt, physician to the forces, and of Dr. Mitchell, surgeon of the flagship, was referred to. Dr. Shortt, however, thought it proper to assert the dignity belonging to his profession, and refused (being under the same roof with the patient,) to give an opinion on a case of so much importance in itself, and attended with so much obscurity, unless he were permitted to see and examine him. The officers of Napoleon's household excused themselves, by professing that the Emperor's strict commands had been laid on them, that no English physician, Dr. Arnott excepted, should approach his dying bed. They said, that even when he was speechless they would be unable to brook his eye, should he turn it upon them in reproof for their disobedience.
About two o'clock of the same day, the priest Vignali administered the sacrament of extreme unction. Some days before, Napoleon had explained to him the manner in which he desired his body should be laid out in state, in an apartment lighted by torches, or what Catholics call une chambre ardente. "I am neither," he said, in the same phrase which we have formerly quoted, "a philosopher nor a physician. I believe in God, and am of the religion of my father. It is not every body who can be an atheist. I was born a Catholic, and will fulfil all the duties of the Catholic Church, and receive the assistance which it administers." He then turned to Dr. Antommarchi, whom he seems to have suspected of heterodoxy, which the doctor, however, disowned. "How can you carry it so far?" he said. "Can you not believe in God, whose existence every thing proclaims, and in whom the greatest minds have believed?"[285]
As if to mark a closing point of resemblance betwixt Cromwell and Napoleon, a dreadful tempest arose on the 4th May, which preceded the day that was to close the mortal existence of this extraordinary man. A willow, which had been the Exile's favourite, and under which he had often enjoyed the fresh breeze, was torn up by the hurricane; and almost all the trees about Longwood shared the same fate.