years before the end, he expresses the hope that he will die without a
confessor, but adds that no one can be certain what he will do in his
last hours. In fact, this heart of steel was steadfast to the end.
Nevertheless, his ideas as to the nature of the creation developed,
and just as the revolutionist became a legitimist, so the materialist
became a theist. But these developments were not transformations;
there was simply a broadening of the basis of his thought. Throughout
life, he had a sense that things had come into existence by a natural
process: “When out hunting, I had the deer cut open, and saw how like the
beast’s internal organs were to those of a human being. Man is merely
a more perfect creature than a dog or a tree. The plan is the first
link in a chain whose last link is mankind.” It should be remembered
that the Emperor had not read Goethe’s _Zur Morphologie_, or Lamarck’s
_Philosophie zoologique_. He had actually refused to receive Lamarck.
Still more remarkable are his deductions concerning psycho-physical
processes. In a Christmas discourse at St. Helena, he expresses his
doubts as follows: “How can any one understand that God should sanction
the caprices of a ruler who sends thousands of men into battle that they
may die for him?... Where is the soul of a child; or that of a madman?...
What are electricity, galvanism, magnetism? In these lies the great
secret of nature. I am inclined to believe that man is a product of
these fluids and of the atmosphere; the brain sucks them in and imparts
life, and the soul is composed of them. After death, they return into
the atmosphere, whence they are sucked up again by other brains.” After
giving utterance to these Goethean motifs, he is alarmed at his own
temerity. Breaking off suddenly, he says, as a soldier among soldiers:
“Oh, well, my dear Gourgaud, when we are dead, we are simply dead.”
Side by side with this scepticism, there exists and expands a theism. To
Laplace, who denies the existence of God, he says: “You should be more
ready than any one else to admit that God exists, for you, more than
most, have seen the wonders of creation. If we cannot actually see God
with our own eyes, this is because he did not wish our understanding to
reach so far.” On another occasion: “We believe in God because everything
around us testifies to his existence.” In St. Helena: “I have never
doubted the existence of God, for, even if my reason were incompetent to
grasp him, still my inner feelings would convince me of his reality. My
temperament has always been in harmony with this feeling.”
How shall such a spirit come to terms with destiny? Since his self-esteem
makes it impossible for him to believe that any man can have beaten
him, he is forced to ascribe his defeat to fate. But this sense of the
workings of destiny is present in his mind before the final overthrow;
it accompanies him throughout life, and appears to be an equivalent for
the reverence, devotion, and faith by which other men live. With the
aid of his belief in destiny, Napoleon wages a heroic struggle. In his
strongest moments, he feels that he wears armour of proof: “I have a soul
of marble. The lightnings were unable to destroy it, but broke on it in
vain.” Once he expresses his defiance even more poetically: “Should the
heavens fall down on us, we shall hold them off with the points of our
lances!”
But these defiant moods are rare. In general, he is resigned to fate.
There are hundreds of his sayings to bear witness to this. Here are
three: “All that happens, is written; our hour is fixed, and no one can
postpone it.... No one can escape his fate.” To the duchess of Weimar:
“Believe me, there is a providence which guides all. I am merely its
instrument.” To Johannes von Müller: “Fundamentally, all things are
linked together, and are subject to the unsearchable guidance of an
unseen hand. I have only become great through the influence of my star.”
In such tropes we see awareness of God and a sense of dependence welded
into pride in his own mission. At these times, a prophetical effulgence
seems to radiate from him, but is obscured again and again by the
self-confidence of his iron energy.
Yet Napoleon was far from believing in his star as another man may
believe in a god or a talisman. He could not bear to have the greatness
of his deeds minimised by insistence on his good fortune. He was,
therefore, far less superstitious than other men of his type. Louis
brings him a valuable knife, but hesitates to give it to him; Napoleon
snatches it from his brother’s hand, saying: “Don’t bother, it won’t
cut anything but bread!” He scolds Josephine because she consults
fortune-tellers; but then, being curious, asks her to tell him all about
the hocus-pocus. He wants to have the signing of the peace of Pressburg
postponed for a few days, that it may take place after the reintroduction
of the prerevolutionary calendar; but he does not order this, being
content to use the unwonted phrase, “that would please me very much.”
Schwarzenberg’s death, in 1820, is a great relief to him; for when a
fire broke out in the Schwarzenberg mansion at the ball given in honour
of Napoleon’s second marriage, the Emperor had interpreted this as a bad
omen for himself; now Schwarzenberg’s death is a derivative for his own
uneasy forebodings!
Apart from these trifles, in a life so packed with important happenings,
we do not hear of a single day during twenty years on which he forms,
postpones, or modifies a resolution on superstitious grounds. But he
makes an adroit use of his “star” and his “destiny” for political or
rhetorical purposes. Since he wishes to pose before Europe as the Man
of Destiny, he tries to work upon suggestible minds like Alexander’s by
such turns of phrase as the following: “It is wise and politic to do
what fate commands, and to march on the road along which we are led by
the irresistible course of events.” His mind is fond of playing with
the kindred notions of destiny, circumstance, and chance; and while
he regards destiny as involved in more or less obscurity, he believes
himself able to calculate the chances of a coming battle with almost
mathematical certainty. “In these matters one must be careful not to make
a slip, for an overlooked fraction can modify the whole result.... To
people of mediocre intelligence, chance will always remain a mystery; but
to the clear-sighted, it becomes a reality.”
Sometimes he lumps them all together—talents, destiny, and power,—and
shows himself an energetic fatalist when he says: “Against attempts on my
life, I trust in my luck, my good genius, and my guards.”
In this virile spirit, he strides resolutely along betwixt life and death.
A modern tragedy depicts a man who wishes to die. Napoleon says that
the portrait is well limned, but unnatural: “A man must wish to live,
and must know how to die.” That is why, from youth upwards, he opposes
suicide; first, in an essay; then, in an order of the day; then, with
the reiterated argument that suicide is cowardice, especially in hours of
misfortune. A careful study of the documents shows that the story of his
having attempted suicide just before the first abdication is apocryphal.
The leading memoirs make no reference to the matter, and such accounts
as we have are at second hand and untrustworthy. There is no doubt that
during his last battles Napoleon deliberately sought a soldier’s death;
but he never tried to poison himself.
Yet it was not only in those last days at Fontainebleau, and after
Waterloo, that he suffered from tedium vitæ. The weariness recorded in
the diary of the lad of sixteen, and in the letter which the man of
thirty wrote from Cairo to his brother, were little in evidence during
the most energetic years of febrile activity. Those who trouble to ask
whether persons of genius are happy, will have to agree that this man of
genius, who was not fitted by nature for happiness, enjoyed during the
climax of his career, hours of content, and even sublime moments. But
there were periods of doubt:
“For the tranquillity of France,” says Bonaparte at Rousseau’s tomb, “it
would have been better if this man had never lived.”
“Why, Citizen Consul?”
“He paved the way for the revolution.”
“Surely you are not the man to deplore the revolution?”
“Time will show whether it would not have been better for the peace of
the world if neither Rousseau nor I had lived.”
Gradually these doubts fade. But what he never loses is the sense of
daimonic loneliness, which increases as his soaring flight leads him to
chillier altitudes. “There are times when life is hard to bear.” Since
the sea has always been unfriendly to him, there is only one place where
he really feels at home—the desert, which to him is the image of the
infinite. The desert is the sublime vacancy which expands before him when
the myriad-faceted pictures of ordinary life sink from sight.
But never was Napoleon more perfectly freed from the tyranny of his
thoughts, never was he happier, than when seated alone in his box at the
theatre, watching a tragedy being enacted.
Nothing else could restore his inner peace of mind; for, since he loved
less than most, he was doomed to a tragical loneliness, the price he had
to pay for his egotism. “There is neither happiness nor unhappiness,”
he said. “The life of a happy man is a picture showing black stars on a
silver background. The life of an unhappy man is a picture showing silver
stars on a black background.” But it is not these heroic images which
best characterise the loneliness of a soul. Even more poignant voices
reach us from the familiar arena of the daily struggle:
“Don’t you understand, Caulaincourt, what is going on here? The folk I
have got together want to enjoy themselves; the poor devils don’t realise
that a man has to fight before he can get the repose he longs for. What
about myself? Have not I a palace, a wife, a child? Do I not weary myself
to the utmost with every possible kind of tension? Do I not day by day
give my life to my country?”
He gives his life to his work, for that is what he means when he talks of
his country. A human note, gently plaintive, and fraught with the lofty
irony of the finale, sounds when he says on the island:
“The whole time I was bearing the world on my shoulders. ’Tis rather a
tiring job!”
X
A volcano made the island, which was flung up from beneath the waters
thousands upon thousands of years ago. Forth from the midst of the sea,
projects the gloomy mass of rock. Steep, black, and deeply furrowed are
the walls of lava that run down from the heights into the waves. The
chasm above the harbour looks like the gate of hell to one who first
sees it from a ship; and the traveller fancies that these dark ramparts
must have been built by the hands of demons. Nothing betrays the work
of man but the cannon placed among the rocks. When the voyager lands,
the ground crunches softly beneath his feet, for the soil is made of
disintegrated lava. He is treading the road of death.
An extinct volcano in the Atlantic Ocean, two thousand miles from Europe
and nearly a thousand from Africa, guarded by British guns—such is the
rock of St. Helena, on which this limitless life might have ended like a
tragedy of Æschylus. But, owing to the mendacity of a moralising century,
the malice of English oligarchs, and the dry spitefulness of a colonial
governor, the island becomes the stage for a tragi-comedy.
The diligence of a few farmers and the energy of the East India Company
had made the place pleasant enough. Hundreds of frigates had, by degrees,
brought garden mould, building stone, and timber. But since no one would
stay long on the rock unless under compulsion, there were twelve hundred
negro slaves and Chinese to serve the five hundred whites who dwelt there
for a few years at a time.
No one can stay there. On this island, no one reaches the age of sixty,
and very few live to be fifty; the climate is deadly. We are in sunless
tropics, where the fierce heat of the equator is variegated with cloud
bursts, and where within an hour a damp sultriness may give place to a
cold downpour. The skin of those who, just before, were dripping with
sweat, is suddenly chilled by the storming south-east trade wind, whose
vapours are arrested by the rock. One who, after a burning day, ventures
abroad in the evening, will pant for breath as he walks. Those who stay
for a year, suffer from dysentery, giddiness and fever, vomiting and
palpitation. Above all, they suffer from liver disease. Whenever England
tried to station a squadron at St. Helena, the sailors died by hundreds;
the ships had to put out to sea, and to keep under sail. The officials
and the planters fall sick. Unless they have the luck to live in one of
the four or five sites protected from the wind, they and their families
are soon compelled to seek some healthier place of residence.
The inhabitants will tell you that one of the most unwholesome regions
is a chilly tableland seventeen hundred feet above sea level; a lonely
place, on the windy side of the island, made specially insalubrious by
the persistence of fogs. There grow sparse gum trees, blighted by the
trade wind, gnarled and twisted, leaning away from the prevailing blast.
The St. Helenians call the region Deadwood. Here is Longwood. That is
the place selected by England as the one in which the sick foe can most
certainly be killed. It was not a temporary asylum, chosen hastily and in
an emergency; it was not originally intended for the Emperor; it was made
ready for him while he was living elsewhere on the island, in poor case,
but still in fairly good health.
Till yesterday, Longwood had been a stable, built fifty years before,
and only at the last moment transformed into a dwelling-house. Negroes,
and the carpenters of the “Northumberland,” fixed a wooden floor over
the mud of the interior, neglecting to clear away the cattle dung. Soon
after the Emperor’s entry, the planks rotted and broke, the stinking
damp soaked through the flooring, and he had to move into another room.
For himself and his followers, a home has been made out of a cow-shed, a
wash-house, and a stable. In his bedroom, a dark and narrow corner, the
brown nankeen which covers the walls is stained with saltpetre; smells
from the kitchen invade it. In this last point it resembles the lodging
he had in a café thirty years ago when he was lieutenant in Valence.
But in that earlier abode his books kept dry; here they are attacked by
mould. The dining-room is lighted through a glass door; the drawing-room
is furnished with a worm-eaten mahogany suite; the servants’ quarters are
flooded by the rain, for the roof here is made of roofing-felt.
The Emperor lives in two small rooms, each about fourteen feet by
twelve, and ten feet high. The bedroom boasts a threadbare carpet,
muslin curtains, a fireplace, painted wooden chairs, two small tables,
a wash-hand-stand, and a sofa. The work-room has a bare table, under
which two chairs are tucked; rough shelves closely packed with books, and
an extra bed where he would rest sometimes in the daytime or which he
would use on the nights when he was restless and sleepless. The bedroom
contains some trophies rescued from his ruin; the little camp-bed he had
used at Austerlitz, hung with green silk curtains; a silver lamp; and, on
the wash-hand-stand, magnificent silver ewers and basins.
These rooms, and indeed the whole premises, swarm with rats, which kill
the fowls, gnaw the leg of a sick horse, bite General Bertrand in the
hand, and spring out of Napoleon’s three-cornered hat as he takes it from
the sideboard.
Who lives in the house besides the rats? Three counts and one baron with
their families (all of them officers, and accustomed to court life), two
valets, and the rest of the Emperor’s staff with their dependents; nearly
forty persons in all, when they first land. After six years, at the end
of Napoleon’s life, the number has been reduced by half.
Las Cases and his young son hold out for a year. Marquis and émigré,
older than the Emperor, a sprig of the Faubourg, count of the empire, it
was not until the Hundred Days that Las Cases became one of Napoleon’s
close associates. He was a man of the world, author of some works on
geography; later he was to write his _Memorial of St. Helena_, which is
said to have brought him thousands of pounds. He was shorter than the
Emperor, and as lean as General Bonaparte had been. He was cultured,
pleasant of temper, always ready to serve: certainly the most agreeable
companion and secretary the prisoner had. He entertained the Emperor
with witticisms the Parisians had made at Napoleon’s expense, thereby
unfolding the comic obverse of a tragic career. Las Cases taught the
Emperor English, thus widening the scope of the exile’s reading. When
the two men exchanged notes in English, the count would underscore the
Emperor’s mistakes. Las Cases, under various pretexts, finally abandoned
the island, and left a vacant place which during the last years of the
Emperor’s life was never to be filled.
For Bertrand, sometime governor of Illyria, and devoted to the Emperor,
is touchy, and is too proud to write from dictation; in other respects,
he observes a faultless passivity, except when he shows fear of offending
his wife. This lady, a beautiful creole, half-English with the head of a
young lord, had been loath to share Napoleon’s exile. At Plymouth, she
had tried to throw herself overboard; she is miserable, thinks of Paris,
and weeps over her youth; consorts much with the enemy. One day her place
is empty at the Emperor’s board. Napoleon says that his house is not
an inn; Bertrand is aggrieved at the reproach, and does not put in an
appearance next day. Then the Emperor is so unhappy that he cannot eat,
and pushes his plate away, saying softly and with deep melancholy: “If,
in Longwood, they are going to fail in their respect for me, my lot is
bitterer than if it had happened in Paris.”
Gourgaud is unbearable. The young general had been through the last
campaigns as Napoleon’s adjutant. His affection for his chief has made
him accompany the Emperor to St. Helena; but he is quite unable to
overcome his feelings of wonder at his self-sacrifice. After a few weeks’
sojourn on the island he meets a charming lady, and writes in his diary:
“O liberty, why am I a prisoner?” He is useful to the Emperor because of
his erstwhile position on the general staff; he is conversant with the
science of strategy, understands maps and mathematics. Not a day goes
by, however, but Gourgaud is offended. Innate vanity and jealousy are
increased a thousandfold by the narrowness of the circle; he becomes the
incarnation of the grotesque, which, from the first day on the island,
begins to encompass the Emperor about. Gourgaud has the temperament of
a snarling dog; he cannot allow Las Cases to take precedence; Napoleon
vainly tries to smooth the young man’s ruffled plumes, and only by
resorting to command is he able to prevent a duel. “You followed me here
in order to comfort my life, so you are brothers. Am I no longer here to
care for you? And are you not aware that the eyes of strangers are upon
you?”
The Emperor learns patience upon the rock. He also learns
considerateness, especially where Gourgaud is concerned. A dozen times
and more, he speaks to the young man in fatherly fashion; tries to
persuade him to bear with his companions; cajoles him with the promise
of a wealthy and beautiful Corsican bride. Another time he sends the
general to a little festivity in the town: “You will meet the Baroness
Stürmer there, and see Lady Lowe. At your age, it is always agreeable
to consort with pretty women. You will go to sleep filled with pleasant
thoughts, and by to-morrow morning you’ll feel fit for work once more.
We’ll talk over the Russian campaign....” A voice from Tartarus! But
next day Gourgaud again takes offence because in a picture of the group
which has been painted by one of the valets, he appears in civilian
dress. A few days later he reminds his master of an episode near Brienne:
Gourgaud saved Napoleon’s life by cutting down a Cossack who was about to
attack the Emperor. The Emperor pretends to have forgotten; Gourgaud is
outraged, saying that all Paris was buzzing with talk of the incident.
Napoleon smiles: “You are a brave man, but amazingly childish.”
Las Cases’ servant steals a diamond cross belonging to Gourgaud; in order
to secure peace, the Emperor has to put the cross in his own pocket, and,
later, present it to Gourgaud with the assurance that he had taken it
himself. Again, Gourgaud complains that he is short of money and has not
enough to keep his mother in comfort. The Emperor writes: “General! We
are here on a battle-field. He who runs away because he does not receive
enough money, is a coward!... I do not owe you any thanks. If you had
remained in France you would have been executed, for you had a command
in the ’15 campaign!” In rare moments only, does the rage in his heart
find such vent. Napoleon does, indeed, tell Gourgaud that he is free to
leave any day he pleases. But immediately afterwards the Emperor turns
the conversation on to cannons, gun-carriages, and cartridges. Next day
he says:
“My dear Gourgaud, how glum you look! Have a cold rub down; that’ll do
you good. One must curb one’s imagination, otherwise one is liable to go
mad; it is like the Danube: at the source of the river one can cross it
in a bound.... When I die, I shall leave no family behind me but you. I
am no longer wealthy, but I have a few million still. In addition you
will inherit my writings. I know what I owe you. But, while we are here,
I want my friends to cheer me, and not to make me sadder by pulling long
faces.... Do you fancy that I have no terrible moments? At night I wake
up and think of what I was and to what I have come.”
When such poignant words are uttered at the table of this tiny court,
all sit silent and tremble. Each one feels that from this room, this
house, this island, an echo like a belated rock-fall from the volcano
must surely find its way to Europe’s shore. For a few days thereafter,
intrigues are discontinued and enmities subside. But next week, over
a trifle, the quarrels break out anew. Gourgaud can stand life on the
island no more. He leaves at the end of two years. He makes friends with
the English, and, when he bids farewell to Emperor and island, he sails
away with letters of introduction from the governor who is the deadly foe
of his master.
[Illustration: Napoleon at St. Helena. Watercolour painting, probably by
a Japanese, with a marginal inscription in Chinese ideographs concerning
the owner. Broadley collection.]
Count Montholon is the most loyal of the exile’s companions. As a
youngster of ten he had been instructed by Captain Buonaparte in
mathematics. Later, he had served in two score battles under his master,
and was much at the Emperor’s court. Many decades after Napoleon’s death,
he proved his fidelity to the House of Bonaparte; for, just as now he
offers up six years of his life to live with his exiled master on this
rocky site, so, too, he devotes six further years to Napoleon’s nephew,
sharing the third Napoleon’s captivity in a fortress. The only drawback
in St. Helena is that the count’s wife does not get on with Madame
Bertrand. One day the countess declares in the hearing of all that the
Bertrands’ latest born is puny because the mother’s milk is good for
nothing.
Meanwhile Madame Bertrand is reckoning that her eldest is sure to be
made grand marshal as soon as Napoleon II ascends the throne. How much
jealousy rages in these breasts because, meanwhile, under Napoleon I,
Bertrand remains “grand marshal,” while Montholon superintends culinary
affairs and Gourgaud attends to the Emperor’s stable. Besides, none of
them have enough to do. Their duties cannot occupy more than two hours of
the endless day. At last things come to such a pass in this ramshackle
palace that the members of the little court can only communicate with one
another in writing. Even Countess Montholon and her children have in the
end to forsake the Emperor and the island.
Who is really loyal, loyal in his heart of hearts?