and messengers. While for himself he asks neither land nor money, for her
he demands that, in addition to Parma, she should have Tuscany, or at
least a strip of it which would bring her lands nearer to Elba and thus
set up a link between man and wife. He writes to her advising as to the
best halting-places on the route; Corvisart is to decide which waters
will do her health most good; she is to take her personal treasure with
her. Then he writes to the palace prefect that all the diamonds which are
not her or his personal property must be given back to the treasury, for
they belong to France.
Meanwhile the government has sent a confidential agent to the Tuileries
with orders to seize the imperial treasure. All the gold and securities,
valued at one hundred and fifty millions, were taken away; in plain
words, stolen. These sums had been saved by Napoleon from his civil list
during the fourteen years of his rule. His silver plate, all personal
articles of value, his golden snuff-boxes, and even his handkerchiefs
embroidered with the initial N., were taken at the same time. The order
for this bears, among others, Talleyrand’s signature. The Emperor, who
until yesterday was the wealthiest man in Europe, journeys to Elba with
three million francs as his fortune!
He is profoundly disheartened. Can anything disillusion him further?
Lucien writes to the pope the day after the abdication, and becomes a
Roman prince. Murat, acting on the advice of Fouché (who holds the net
of intrigues during these last weeks), has entered Rome, has advanced
his troops towards Tuscany, invading Elise’s realm—always spurred on
by Caroline, and always in alliance with England, which has occupied
Tuscany. Elise, who at the last moment has staked on the wrong hazard,
and has through a false calculation remained faithful to her brother,
flees before her sister’s troops, brings a child into the world while
lying up at a mountain tavern, and in Bologna is taken prisoner by the
Austrians. The only two of the pack who have behaved decently are Jerome
and his wife.
The last days pass in sinister silence. “If a carriage drives into the
palace yard, all prick up their ears. Is any one coming to bid Napoleon
farewell? No one comes while affairs are being wound up. But a day or
two before the departure, a veiled lady arrives, late in the evening. No
one knows her, and she is not admitted. Countess Walewska waits a whole
night, and when she goes away in the morning she leaves a letter for him.
He sends after her, but she has gone. He writes:
“Marie!... The feelings which animate you touch me profoundly. They are
worthy of your lovely soul and the goodness of your heart.... Think
affectionately of me! Never doubt me! N.”
As soon as he has recovered his old tranquillity of mind, the Emperor
is promptly animated with new energy. Has he not an island as base of
operations? Who knows what may come of it? Corsica, too, is an island in
the Mediterranean! He orders a monograph and studies the geography and
statistics of Elba. “The air is wholesome, the inhabitants are honest
folk, and I hope that my good Louise will like the place well enough.”
He chooses his four hundred men; but the whole guard wants to go with
him, though this will involve leaving wife and children. Among them are
men whose hearts he had won two-and-twenty years earlier when he had
been captain in Toulon, men who had followed his fortunes from Cairo to
Moscow, through sixty battles.
He cheers up. Discussing predetermination with the palace prefect, and
how death has passed him by during the last battles, he adds:
“A violent death is cowardice. I can see no greatness in shirking
responsibility in that manner, like one who has gambled away his
fortune.... Suicide is incompatible with my principles and with the
position I have occupied in the world.” They walk up and down the terrace
in silence for a time, and then he says with a smile: “Between ourselves,
a living drummer is better than a dead emperor!”
All the formalities have been accomplished; the allied commissioners
who are to accompany him to Elba, four in number, have arrived; the
start is fixed for noon. He writes in simple terms to tell his wife,
and concludes: “Farewell, my good Louise. You can rest assured of the
courage, the tranquillity, and the affection of your husband. N.” He adds
as a postscript: “A kiss for the little king!”
The start will be an easy matter, for no one has come to take leave.
But there are to be leave-takings after all. The old guard is waiting
for him in the palace yard, drawn up in a square. As he comes down the
steps, thousands of eyes are fixed on him. He must say something. What
can he say? For twenty years he has only spoken to these men just before
a battle and just after a victory, to inspire them or to thank them.
Well, he will thank them now, though there has been no victory; he will
thank them for the hundred victories of the past. He steps forward. “Vive
l’Empereur!” He enters the square, and says:
“Soldiers of my old guard, I take leave of you. For twenty years I have
seen you always upon the path of honour and glory. During the last few
weeks, you have been models of bravery and fidelity, just as in the
years of good fortune.... But there would have been civil war. That is
why I sacrificed all other interests to those of the country. I am going
away.... You, friends, continue to serve France. Her happiness has been
my only thought. My good wishes go with you. Do not mourn my fate. If I
have determined to go on living, it is that I may increase your fame. I
shall write the story of the great deeds we wrought together. Farewell,
my children. I would gladly press you all to my heart. At least let me
kiss your colours!”
The general holds out the colours. Napoleon embraces him, and kisses the
flag. “Good-bye, comrades!” He gets into the carriage. “Vive l’Empereur!”
He drives away.
The war-hardened veterans stand there, blubbering like children. Their
father has gone away. Never had he spoken to them more movingly. The
dignified pathos of ancient Rome, the ardent imagery of his manifestoes,
the similes and the exaltations, have vanished with the fever of
battle. This Emperor spoke like a commander, this commander spoke like
a company leader. His words were manly, blunt, and restrained. When he
kissed the colours, it was an unparalleled gesture; never before had he
done anything of the kind. They will tell their grandchildren what the
great Emperor, their “petit caporal,” has said to them this day. The
grandchildren will tell their grandchildren in turn, and so the story
will go down the generations.
But hardly has he left this soldierly atmosphere, in which he grew to
manhood and then to greatness, when he has to face the mob. After the
sobs of his old soldiers, come clamour, cries, and curses! As the train
of carriages drives swiftly through Provence, the threatening shouts of
the people deafen him: “Down with the tyrant! Kill the wretch!” In the
villages where the horses are changed, women rage round his carriage,
screaming at him, flinging stones, trying to force the coachman to
shout “Vive le Roi!” At one of these villages, the crowd has prepared
an effigy, a uniform coat stuffed with straw and smeared with mire
and blood. Here they hail him with the cry: “Kill the murderer!” The
carriages press on at top speed and the journey becomes a flight.
Napoleon’s first flight.
With rigid face, the Emperor looks at the mob and listens to the cries of
execration. Are these the same people who ran beside his carriage, eager
to catch a glance from his eyes? They are indeed the same! What he is now
experiencing, he had foreseen, with the seer’s vision of the misanthrope,
at his first entry into Paris when the crowd had jubilantly welcomed
him as conqueror. He sits huddled in a corner of the carriage, pale and
silent; at each halt, the foreign commissioners jump out to guard the
windows of his coach. Will he bear all this without making a sign? Will
he draw his sword? He does not wear one now. In mufti, he can get away
from his country, but not in his green uniform. Only once before has
he had such an experience. It was on the Nineteenth Brumaire, when the
radicals were shaking their fists at him. Then he did not draw his sword.
Then, as now, he was powerless against the mob, for it was not his trade
to beat the mutable many, nor was it his talent to persuade them. He is
not a tribune; he is an emperor. One who can command as well as he, can
do nothing but command. If he fights, it must be in a battle.
Movement! Air! In a lonely road, he has the carriage stopped, and one of
the post-horses taken out of the traces. He fixes a white cockade on his
plain round hat, and rides in front of the carriages, outstripping them,
his servant following. Thus he makes his way to Aix, but halts short of
the town, enters a wayside inn, and gives his name there as Campbell, a
British colonel. This is his sixth name.
The little Provençal maid who waits at table prattles: “They’ll finish
him off before he reaches the sea!” “Colonel Campbell” nods, saying “Of
course, of course!” to all her utterances. Then, when he is left alone
with his servant, his head droops on the man’s shoulder, he has a nap to
make up for two sleepless nights. Kindly nature, this is your gift to the
greatest of your warriors! When he wakes, the recent sounds and sights
recur to his mind. With a shudder, he says in low tones:
“Never again! I shall be happier in Elba than ever before. The sciences
now, nothing more. I do not want to wear another European crown. You have
seen what the people really is. Was I not right to despise man?”
When the carriages reach the inn, he thinks it wise, warned by his
previous experiences, to change his clothes once more. Since time
presses, he puts on the uniform of an Austrian general which belongs to
Commissioner Koller; surmounts it with the cap of Truchsess, the Prussian
colonel; and has a Russian cloak hung round his shoulders by Shuvaloff.
Thus bedecked in a carnival costume, pieced together from garments
belonging to the three allied powers, a fool on the heath, does Emperor
Napoleon escape from his country.
Fréjus at last! This is the port where he landed on his return from
Egypt, a beaten commander, who had lost all the battleships of France,
and ought to have been tried by court-martial! But how enthusiastic,
then, had been his reception by this leaderless people, for the memory
of his successful Italian campaign was still fresh. Then, he had driven
through triumphal arches on the journey to Paris; the journey he had now
been making in the reverse direction, in danger of being stoned, and
escaping murder only by a mummer’s disguise! Fifteen years lie between,
the rebirth of a State, the glory of a nation. Europe lies between, the
clash of arms, dead soldiers rotting in their graves, the returning hero
received with frenzied acclamations, a marshal rising from pothouse
to palace, men of genius taking sides for and against the conquering
nation—and a circlet of little golden leaves which the foreigner from
the Mediterranean island had, with the simplicity of the self-made man,
placed on his own brow.
XV
How big Corsica is! How high her mountains! Bastia is an admirable
harbour; its fortifications can be seen through a spyglass. If taken from
the eastern side....
When the ruler of Elba rides among the hills of his new home, the
silhouette of his old home lies spread before him; everything looms
larger across the water. Forty times bigger, ten times as many
inhabitants; he has all the figures, to a unit, in his head. Elba is
nothing more than a mole-hill.
On the clear May morning when he landed, he was welcomed by a deputation
of peasants and petty burghers in Porto Ferrajo. Timidly they had paid
their compliments to the man who was to reign over them. But their
astonishment was great when, instead of inviting them to a banquet,
he leapt into the saddle and rode off to inspect the fortifications.
On the morrow, orders began to fly about the sleepy little isle:
Pianosa was to have two more batteries; the mole must be lengthened;
the roads improved. When first the four hundred grenadiers appeared in
the land, the natives looked at them askance as men of a foreign race.
Soon, however, the forces were increased by the creation of a foreign
battalion, and a National Guard. Napoleon once more has an army of over a
thousand men; soon he has a small flotilla likewise. What for? Just for
him to see after and take care of. He has a Council of State; Bertrand
and Drouot (the generals who have accompanied him into exile) and a dozen
inhabitants of the island, are members; and, together with Napoleon who
presides over the assembly, they discuss improvements in the iron mines
and the salt pits. Have you no mulberry culture here? The silkworms bring
in good money over there, in Lyons; and if the French government imposes
a tariff upon our produce, we can easily sell to Italy.
Save! We are so poor, and France makes no move to pay the promised
allowance. The white house is smaller than the one in Ajaccio, and
very much simpler; but there is no money for building additional
accommodation; and when the “grand marshal” Bertrand draws up a list of
mattresses and other bedgear, his master underlines the mistakes,—for he
has every detail of his establishment by heart.
Is this indefatigable man never to realise what a parody is his
administration over the tiny island, the diminutive army, the small
household? Never! Here in Elba, where in the best of spirits and health
he throws himself whole-heartedly into his undertakings, he comes to
realise that it was not the masses that had allured him. To order, to
build, to press his finger into the wax of humanity, these things he
must do, urged onward by the impulse of his artist’s soul. But, since
humanity is not as wax, and since his constructions can never be finished
and are always vibrant with life; since the opposition of material
forces also takes a hand in the game, even when matter seems to have
been conquered—he can only fulfil his mission by coercing and conquering
the human spirit, by issuing orders and bringing suggestions to bear, by
constant vigilance and constant upbuilding; in a word, by ruling. He has
never been a dilettante or a parvenu; and, this being so, he drives the
little wheel to-day with just as much precision and earnestness as he had
driven the earth’s sphere in former days.
But soon, when most of his enterprises are in good going order, he feels
he is becoming lazy, even when he is studying mathematics. This causes
him to reconsider his position.
“It is by no means difficult to accustom oneself to a life of
meditation,” he writes, “if one possesses within oneself the necessary
reserves. I work hard in my study; when I emerge I have the delightful
spectacle of my old grenadiers in front of me.... Born kings must suffer
terribly when they are dethroned, for pomp and etiquette are the very
marrow of their lives. For my part, I have always been a soldier, and
became a king only by chance, so that these things have been nothing but
a burden to me, whereas wars and camps come naturally. Out of my great
past, I regret naught but my soldiers. After all my treasures and my
crowns, my most cherished possessions are the couple of French uniforms
they have allowed me to keep.”
These are the words of an unpretentious king. Do people not believe him?
And does Europe laugh when, in his kingdom of Lilliput, he preserves
the forms of kingship? Does Europe begin to suspect a secret in the
island? The innate dignity, whereby long ago the young general had wrung
respect from the bearers of inherited rank, to-day is still able to hold
satirical visitors in check. Every one admires the natural simplicity of
the lonely man who, despite the exiguity of his dwelling, still holds to
the title of “Majesty.” He lives in his island sans palace or fittings,
sans court or ministers, only surrounded with the aureole of his deeds.
This return home brings solace to his heart—for Elba is Italy. The
peasant speaks to him in the language Napolione had learned at Letizia’s
knee. The Mediterranean amid whose waters he was born and reared, the
islands with their quiet shores, do they not all of them bring back
memories of youthful days? Stone-pines, fig trees, and crags; the white
houses among the vineyards; the sails, and the fishermen’s nets; pride of
clan, and the headkerchief worn at church; all these things seem to take
him gently by the hand and lead him back to the dreams of childhood. Now
the storm-racked nerves relax, and at length know a spell of repose. In
these wholesome months, the Emperor comes to look upon his career as a
visionary flight into the land of childish imagination; and it is only
when he contemplates the men of his old guard that he realises something
did happen during the years that separate Corsica from Elba.
“The Emperor lives very contentedly on his island,” writes one who
accompanied him there. “He seems to have forgotten the past. The
management of his small household gives him occupation; he is now looking
out for a suitable site to build his country-seat; we ride, and drive,
and sail round the coasts as much as we please.”
Since he has plenty of time on his hands, and since thrift is essential,
he examines everything, to the minutest details. Just as, in the
Tuileries, he himself drew up the list of his clothing, so now, in Elba,
he says to Bertrand: “My underlinen is in a lamentable state. Part of it
has never been unpacked, and it has not been marked. Give orders that
everything must be laid out in drawers and presses, and that no one is to
be given anything belonging to our court without furnishing a receipt....
There are not enough ordinary chairs. Have a sample sent from Pisa; they
must not cost more than five francs apiece.”
Europe laughs when it hears of this. Posterity stands bewildered before
such energetic renunciation.
Once only do we hear a gentle sigh. He has climbed to the top of a hill
whence he can look over the whole of his realm. Surveying the prospect,
he says: “One must acknowledge that the island is very small.” Like
distant thunder, the fate of a man seems to rumble in these words; for an
all too great imagination, confined within the narrow limits of Europe
and cribbed within the circle of the folk intelligence of the nineteenth
century, is doomed at the outset to be crushed.
With the summer, comes his mother. She, alone, is happy. Her son is
no longer threatened with assassination or with battles. Here, all is
peaceful and warm; Elba is almost as lovely as Corsica. Daily intercourse
with him renews for her the good old times. It is as well that she has
come; for, from the millions which she alone has put by, she now brings
her son what he needs; and when he receives her banknotes, may we not
picture mother and son smiling at one another? On his name-day, she
invites him to a little rustic feast.
[Illustration: Napoleon as Emperor. Engraving by Bourgeois, after a
painting by Jacques Louis David.
(From the “Corpus Imaginum” of the Photographic Society, Charlottenburg.)]
A dozen and more St. Napoleon days she has spent in Paris: the guns would
fire the salute from the Invalides, Masses would be said; Senate and
ministers, the court and foreign diplomats, would throng the halls of the
Tuileries. When, in the evening, the rooms were filled with guests, and,
amid the strains of music, there came and went all that France possessed
of great names, of beauty, and of precious jewels; when the fireworks
filled the August night-sky with brightness, and thousands of tiny lamps
formed the initial N.—Letizia, surrounded by the kings who were the fruit
of her womb, would stand silent and proud, thinking the old words so full
of ominous warning. But to-day she is blithe; to-day she compares this
jocund festivity with the little town of Ajaccio; to-day, for the first
time, she thinks: “All the same, we achieved something fine!”
Letizia had been able, while in Rome, to heal many wounds dealt in the
heat of the fray. The pope, on his return, had pardoned the mother of
his sometime foe. She was not surprised when the whole court, when even
her secretary (a Corsican), speedily went over to the Bourbon king. Has
she not always foretold it? Caroline, alone, is not permitted to appear
before her.
Pauline, Princess Borghese, merry and brilliant, does not hang long in
the wind. She has always been the most affectionate, and has been clever
enough to prefer real diamonds and nights of love to uncertain thrones
and crowns. She comes to the island, so that, with her mother, she may
bring cheer to the Emperor. She shakes out a basketful of gossip and news
for his delectation.
Hardly a word from his brothers. One letter comes from Lucien. What
propositions can he be laying before his banished brother? Will he, who
lives in princely fashion in Rome, with magnanimous generosity offer
Napoleon money or bring his influence to bear in his imperial brother’s
behalf? What does the “Prince of Canino” by the pope’s grace write in his
letter? He owns smelting furnaces, and Elba has iron ore wherewith to
feed them: he asks his brother to provide him with the minerals. Crowns
and gold, he has refused; but iron, which his brother still possesses, he
can make good use of. Maybe he, who is a poet, is enjoying the farce of
these blast-furnaces! Is it not a kindness that one still thinks of the
exile? Who else writes?
Josephine is dead. A few weeks after Napoleon’s departure, she died at
Malmaison. No one knows if she ever wrote to him; what is certain is
that she left debts amounting to three millions, which he had to pay.
Hortense has been separated from her husband. She has become a duchess,
and has made her most graceful curtsey before the Bourbon king, in the
very room where she and her mother had held sway for so long. Little
Léon, whom Letizia had for a time with her in Rome, resembles his father;
he is reported to be courageous and full of pranks. These are all the
members of Napoleon’s family about whom he has news.
An English vessel brings the unknown lady who visited Fontainebleau
to the island. In a marquee, beneath the chestnut trees, the Emperor
receives Countess Walewska. For two days and two nights they are
inseparable. The Emperor only issues forth to give the necessary orders,
and the four-year-old boy, dressed in the Polish national costume, plays
in the meadow with the tall grenadiers. The Emperor would like to keep
Walewska by his side, but he does not wish to provide the empress with
an excuse for not coming to live with him. Thus, for the second time,
he sacrifices on the altar of the Habsburg princess the phantom of his
happiness. Walewska sails away. Her ship encounters bad weather, and the
Emperor is filled with restless anxiety until he receives tidings that
she has arrived safely at Leghorn.
How marvellously are the threads weaving themselves into the tissue of
a legend! With wizard spells this man of forty-five links up epochs and
customs. Here he is, a petty prince on a Mediterranean isle: he receives
his beloved, the lady with whom he had lived in the imperial palace at
Schönbrunn when he himself was an enemy and unknown to the proprietor;
to-day he is once again this man’s foe, and another woman whom he had
invited to his arms from the self-same palace has long since forsaken
him; yet his natural son, born in a lonely castle in Poland, is playing
beneath the trees of the southern land and wears the dress of a foreign
folk which the Emperor had once promised to free. Who could believe that
all this had come to pass within five years? A hundred years seemed
likelier for the accomplishment of so many events. With such nets, what
other fish could one expect to catch but the golden ones of the fairy
tale? A thousand years ago a great emperor was banished and left forsaken
on an island; but from a distant realm a beautiful, tragical woman found
the way to him across the sea, and brought him his son.