26th. The weather was still bad; it was impossible to set foot out of
doors. The rain and the damp invaded our pasteboard apartments. Every
one of us suffered in his health in consequence. The temperature here is
certainly mild, but the climate is among the most unwholesome. It is a
thing ascertained in the island, that few there attain the age of fifty;
hardly any that of sixty. Add to this, exclusion from the rest of the
world, physical privations, bad moral treatment, and it will result that
prisons in Europe are far preferable to liberty in St. Helena.
About four o’clock several Captains from China were brought to me, who
were to be presented to the Emperor. They had an opportunity of seeing
the smallness, the dampness, and bad state of my habitation. They
enquired how the Emperor found himself in point of health. It declined
visibly, I told them. Never did we hear a complaint from him: his great
soul suffered nothing to overcome it, and even contributed to deceive
him with respect to his own state: but we could see him decay very
perceptibly. I led them shortly after to the Emperor who was walking in
the garden. He seemed to me at that moment more disordered than usual.
He dismissed them in half an hour. He went in again, and took a bath.
Before and after dinner he seemed in low spirits and in pain. He began
to read to us _Les Femmes Savantes_; but at the second act he handed the
book to the Grand Marshal, and dozed upon the sofa during the reading of
the remainder.
REMARKS OF THE EMPEROR ON HIS EXPEDITION
IN THE EAST.
30th–31st. This day the weather has continued very bad; we all suffered
from it: besides, we are absolutely eaten up with rats, fleas, and bugs:
our sleep is disturbed by them, so that the troubles by night are in
perfect harmony with those by day.
The weather changed entirely to fair on the 31st; we went out in the
carriage. The Emperor, in the course of conversation, observed, speaking
of Egypt and Syria, that if he had taken St. Jean d’Acre, as ought to
have been the case, he should have wrought a revolution in the East.
“The most trivial circumstances,” said he, "lead to the greatest events.
The weakness of the captain of a frigate, who stood out to sea instead
of forcing a passage into the harbour, some trifling impediments with
respect to some sloops or light vessels, prevented the face of the world
from being changed. Possessed of St. Jean d’Acre, the French army would
have flown to Damascus and Aleppo; in a twinkling it would have been on
the Euphrates; the Christians of Syria, the Druses, the Christians of
Armenia, would have joined it: nations were on the point of being
shaken." One of us having said that they would have speedily been
re-inforced with 100,000 men—"Say 600,000," replied the Emperor; “who
can calculate what it might have been? I should have reached
Constantinople and the Indies; I should have changed the face of the
world.”