15th.—This day, the 15th of August, was the Emperor’s birthday. We had
determined to wait upon him, in a body, about eleven o’clock. He
disappointed us by appearing gaily at our doors at nine. The weather was
mild; he went to the garden, and we all assembled there in succession.
The Grand Marshal, with his wife and children, joined us. The Emperor,
surrounded by his faithful servants, breakfasted in the large and
beautiful tent, which is a really fortunate acquisition. The temperature
was fine, and he himself cheerful and talkative. He seemed, for some
instants, to participate in our sentiments and wishes. He desired, he
said, to pass the whole day in the midst of us. Accordingly, we
continued together, and spent the time in conversation, in different
pursuits, in walking, and in riding in the carriage.
POLYTECHNIC SCHOOL SUPPRESSED, &c.—INDECENCY OF
THE ENGLISH JOURNALS.—ICE MACHINE.
16th.—My son and I went, at a very early hour, to the tent, where the
Emperor continued employed on different chapters of the Campaign of
Italy until two o’clock, when the Governor being announced, he retired,
muttering, “The wretch, I believe, envies me the air I breathe.”
During breakfast, he had called for the Journal des Débats, which
contained the organization of the academies; he wished to see the names
of the members, who had been expelled from the Institute. This led him
to revert to the suppression of the Polytechnic School, which was said
to be useless and dangerous. The English Journal, which we had received,
was not of that opinion. It maintained that the suppression alone was
more valuable to the enemies of France than a signal victory, and that
nothing could more decidedly prove the real pacific sentiments and the
extreme moderation of the dynasty, which then governed France, &c. It
also stated several other things.
Somebody remarked, upon this subject, that the English papers shewed a
malevolence against the French Government, which extended to coarseness
and indecency.
Lord or Lady Holland had, with a peculiar degree of attention, sent to
Longwood, for the Emperor’s use, a newly invented machine, adapted to
the formation of ice. It was delivered to us to-day, through the
intervention of Admiral Malcolm. The Emperor went out about five
o’clock, and was desirous of witnessing the experiment; the Admiral was
present, but the experiment proved very imperfect.
The Emperor, after some time, took a walk, accompanied by the Admiral,
and the conversation turned upon a variety of subjects; it was
maintained in the most affable and friendly manner on the part of the
Emperor.
RELIGIOUS IDEAS OF NAPOLEON.—BISHOP OF NANTES (DE VOISINS).—THE
POPE.—LIBERTIES OF THE GALLICAN CHURCH.—ANECDOTES.—CONCORDAT OF
FONTAINEBLEAU.
17th.—While the Emperor was at breakfast in the tent, two persons
described the excesses which they had witnessed in the army, and which
had not come to his knowledge. They noticed the numerous violations of
his orders, the violent abuses of authority, and other outrages. The
Emperor listened; but some were so shocking that he could not, he said,
give credit to them, and observed: “Come, gentlemen, these are libels.”
The wind was very violent; it blew a storm, with occasional showers. The
wet obliged the Emperor to go in again.
After dinner Zaire and the beautiful scenes of Œdipe were read, among
which he particularly pointed out that of the discovery, which he
pronounced the finest and the most finished of the drama.
In speaking of priests and religion, the conversation led the Emperor to
say: “Man, entering into life, asks himself: Whence do I come? What am
I? Whither am I to go? These are so many mysterious questions, which
urge us on to religion. We eagerly embrace it; we are attracted by our
natural propensity; but as we advance in knowledge our course is
stopped. Instruction and history are the great enemies of religion,
deformed by human imperfection. Why, we ask ourselves, is the religion
of Paris neither that of London nor of Berlin? Why is that of
Petersburgh different from that of Constantinople? Why is the latter
different from that of Persia, of the Ganges, and of China? Why is the
religion of ancient times different from that of our days? Then reason
is sadly staggered; it exclaims, O religions, religions! the children of
man!... We very properly believe in God, because every thing around us
proclaims him, and the most enlightened minds have believed in him; not
only Bossuet, whose profession it was, but also Newton and Leibnitz, who
had nothing to do with it. But we know not what to think of the doctrine
that is taught us, and we find ourselves like the watch which goes,
without knowing the watchmaker that made it. And observe a little the
stupidity of those who educate us; they should keep away from us the
idea of paganism and idolatry; because their absurdity excites the first
exercise of our reason, and prepares us for a resistance to passive
belief; and they bring us up, nevertheless, in the midst of the Greeks
and Romans, with their myriads of divinities. Such, for my own part, has
literally been the progress of my understanding. I felt the necessity of
belief; I did believe, but my belief was shocked and undecided, the
moment I acquired knowledge and began to reason; and that happened to me
at so early an age as thirteen. Perhaps, I shall again believe
implicitly; God grant I may! I shall certainly make no resistance, and I
do not ask a greater blessing; it must, in my mind, be a great and real
happiness.
“In violent agitations, however, and in the casual suggestions of
immorality itself, the absence of that religious faith has never, I
assert, influenced me in any respect, and I never doubted the existence
of God; for, if my reason was inadequate to comprehend it, my mind was
not the less disposed to adopt it. My nerves were in sympathy with that
sentiment.
“When I seized on the helm of affairs, I had already fixed ideas of all
the primary elements by which society is bound together; I had weighed
all the importance of religion; I was convinced, and I determined to
re-establish it. But the resistance I had to overcome in restoring
Catholicism would scarcely be credited. I should have been more
willingly followed had I hoisted the standard of Protestantism. This
reluctance was carried so far that in the Council of State, where I
found great difficulty in getting the Concordat adopted, several yielded
only by forming a plan to extricate themselves from it. ‘Well!’ they
said to one another, ‘let us turn Protestants, and that will not affect
us.’ It is unquestionable that, in the disorder which I succeeded, upon
which I found myself I was at liberty to choose between Catholicism and
Protestantism; and it may also be said, with truth, that the general
disposition, at the moment, was quite in favour of the latter: but,
besides my real adherence to the religion in which I was born, I had the
most important motives to influence my decision. What should I have
gained by proclaiming Protestantism? I should have created two great
parties, very nearly equal, in France, when I wished for the existence
of none at all; I should have revived the fury of religious disputes,
when their total annihilation was called for by the light of the age and
my own feelings. These two parties would, by their mutual distractions,
have destroyed France, and rendered her the slave of Europe, when I had
the ambition to make her the mistress of it. By the help of Catholicism
I attained much more effectually all the grand results that I had in
view. In the interior, at home, the smaller number was swallowed up by
the greater, and I relied upon my treating the former with such an
equality that there would be shortly no motive for marking the
difference. Abroad, the Pope was bound to me by Catholicism; and, with
my influence, and our forces in Italy, I did not despair, sooner or
later, by some means or other, of obtaining for myself the direction of
that Pope, and from that time, what an influence! What a lever of
opinion on the rest of the world!” &c. He concluded with saying;
“Francis I. was really in a state to adopt Protestantism, at its birth,
and to declare himself the head of it in Europe. Charles V., his rival,
was the zealous champion of Rome, because he considered that measure as
an additional means to assist him in his project of enslaving Europe.
Was not that circumstance alone sufficient to point out to Francis the
necessity of taking care of his independence; but he abandoned the
greater to run after the lesser advantage. He persevered in pursuing his
imprudent designs on Italy, and, with the intention of paying court to
the Pope, he burnt Protestants at Paris.
“Had Francis I. embraced Lutheranism, which is favourable to royal
supremacy, he would have preserved France from the dreadful religious
convulsions brought on, at later periods, by the Calvinists, whose
efforts, altogether republican, were on the point of subverting the
throne and dissolving our noble monarchy. Unfortunately, Francis I. was
ignorant of all that; for he could not allege his scruples for an
excuse, he, who entered into an alliance with the Turks, and brought
them into the midst of us. It was precisely because he was incapable of
extending his views so far. The folly of the time! The extent of feudal
intellect! Francis I. was, after all, but a hero for tilts and
tournaments, and a gallant for the drawing-room, one of those pigmy
great men.
“The Bishop of Nantes (De Voisins), said the Emperor, made me a real
Catholic by the efficacy of his arguments, by the excellence of his
morals, and by his enlightened toleration. Marie Louise, whose confessor
he was, consulted him once on the obligation of abstaining from meat on
Fridays.—‘At what table do you dine?’ asked the Bishop.—‘At the
Emperor’s.’ ‘Do you give all the orders there?’—‘No.’ ‘You cannot, then
make any alteration in it; would he do it himself?’—‘I am inclined to
think not.’ ‘Be obedient then, and do not provoke a subject for scandal.
Your first duty is to obey, and make him respected; you will not be in
want of other means to amend your life, and to suffer privations in the
eyes of God.’
“He also behaved in the same way with respect to a public communion,
which some persons put into Marie Louise’s head to celebrate on
Easter-day. She would not, however, consent, without the advice of her
prudent confessor, who dissuaded her from it by similar arguments. What
a difference, said the Emperor, had she been worked upon by a fanatic!
What quarrels, what disagreements might he not have caused between us!
What mischief might he not have done, in the circumstances in which I
was placed!”
The Emperor remarked to us, “that the bishop of Nantes had lived with
Diderot, in the midst of unbelievers, and had uniformly conducted
himself with consistency; he was ready with an answer to every one; and,
above all, he had the good sense to abandon every thing that was not
maintainable, and to strip religion of every thing which he was not
capable of defending.—He was asked, ‘has not an animal, which moves,
combines, and thinks, a soul?’ ‘Why not,’ was his answer. ‘But whither
does it go? For it is not equal to ours.’ ‘What is that to you? It
dwells, perhaps, in limbo.’ He used to retreat within the last
intrenchments, even within the fortress itself, and there he reserved
excellent means for defending himself. He argued better than the Pope,
whom he often confounded. He was the firmest pillar, among our bishops,
of the Gallican liberties. He was my oracle, my luminary; in religious
matters, he possessed my unbounded confidence. For, in my quarrels with
the Pope, it was my first care, whatever intriguers and marplots in
cassocs may say, not to touch upon any dogmatic point: I was so steady
in this conduct, that the instant this good and venerable bishop of
Nantes said to me, ‘Take care, there you are grappling with a dogma,’ I
immediately turned off from the course I was pursuing, to return to it
by other ways, without amusing myself by entering into dissertations
with him, or by seeking even to comprehend his meaning; and, as I had
not let him into my secret, how amazed must he not have been at the
circuits I made! How whimsical, obstinate, capricious, and incoherent,
must I not have appeared to him! It was because I had an object in view,
and he was unacquainted with it.
“The Popes could not forgive us our liberties of the Gallican church.
The four famous propositions of Bossuet, in particular, provoked their
resentment. It was, in their opinion, a real hostile manifesto, and they
accordingly considered us at least as much out of the pale of the church
as the Protestants. They thought us as guilty as they, perhaps more so,
and if they did not overwhelm us with their ostensible thunderbolts, it
was because they dreaded the consequences—our separation. The example of
England was before them. They did not wish to cut off their right arm
with their own hand, but they were constantly on the watch for a
favourable opportunity; they trusted to time for it. They are, no doubt,
ready to believe, that it has now arrived. They will, however, be again
disappointed by the light of the age and the manners of the times.
“Some time before my coronation,” said the Emperor, “the Pope wished to
see me, and made it a point to visit me himself. He had made many
concessions. He had come to Paris for the purpose of crowning me; he
consented not to place the crown on my head himself; he dispensed with
the ceremony of the public communion; he had, therefore, in his opinion,
many compensations to expect in return. He had accordingly at first
dreamt of Romagna and the Legations, and he began to suspect that he
should be obliged to give up all that. He then lowered his pretensions
to a very trifling favour, as he called it, my signature to an ancient
document, a worn-out rag, which he held from Louis XIV. ‘Do me that
favour, said he, in fact, it signifies nothing.’ ‘Cheerfully, most holy
father, and the thing is done, if it be feasible.’” It was, however, a
declaration, in which Louis XIV. at the close of his life, seduced by
Madame de Maintenon, or prevailed upon by his confessors, expressed his
disapprobation of the celebrated articles of 1682, the foundations of
the liberties of the Gallican church. The Emperor shrewdly replied, that
he had not, for his own part, any personal objection, but that it was
requisite for him, as a matter of form, to speak to the bishops about
it; on which the Pope repeatedly observed, that such a communication was
by no means necessary, and that the thing did not deserve to make so
much noise. “‘I shall never,’ he remarked, ‘shew the signature, it shall
be kept as secret as that of Louis XIV.’ ‘But, if it signifies nothing,’
said Napoleon, ‘what use is there for my signature? And if any
signification can be drawn from it, I am bound by a sense of propriety
to consult my doctors.’”
With the view, however, of avoiding the imputation of a constant refusal
of every request, the Emperor wished to seem rather inclined to grant
the favour. “The Bishop of Nantes and the other bishops, who were really
French, came to me in great haste. They were furious, and watched me,”
said the Emperor, “as they would have watched Louis XIV. on his
death-bed, to prevent him from turning Protestant. The Sulpicians were
called in; they were Jesuits _au petit pied_, they strove to find out my
intention, and were ready to do whatever I wished.” The Emperor
concluded with observing;—“The Pope had dispensed with the public
communion in my favour, and it is from his determination in that respect
that I form my opinion of the sincerity of his religious belief. He had
held a congregation of cardinals for the purpose of settling the
ceremonial. The greater number warmly insisted upon my taking the
communion in public, asserting the great influence of the example on the
people, and the necessity of my holding it out. The Pope, on the
contrary, fearful lest I should fulfil that duty as if I were going
through one of the articles of M. de Ségur’s programme, looked upon it
as a sacrilege, and was inflexible in opposing it. ‘Napoleon,’ he
observed, ‘is not perhaps a believer; the time will, no doubt, come, in
which his faith will be established, and in the mean time, let us not
burthen his conscience or our own.’
“In his Christian charity, for he really is a worthy, mild, and
excellent man, he never once despaired of seeing me a penitent, at his
tribunal; he has often let his hopes and thoughts on that subject escape
him. We sometimes conversed about it in a pleasant and friendly manner.
‘It will happen to you, sooner or later,’ said he, with an innocent
tenderness of expression; ‘you will be converted by me or by others, and
you will then feel how great the content, the satisfaction of your own
heart,’ &c. In the mean time, my influence over him was such, that I
drew from him, by the mere power of my conversation, that famous
Concordat of Fontainebleau, in which he renounced the temporal
sovereignty, an act on account of which he has since shown that he
dreaded the judgment of posterity, or rather the reprobation of his
successors. No sooner had he signed than he felt the stings of
repentance. He was to have dined the following day with me in public;
but at night, he was, or pretended to be ill. The truth is that,
immediately after I left him, he again fell into the hands of his
habitual advisers, who drew a terrible picture of the error which he had
committed. Had we been left by ourselves, I might have done what I
pleased with him; I should have governed the religious with the same
facility that I did the political world. He was, in truth, a lamb, a
good man in every respect, a man of real worth, whom I esteem and love
greatly, and who, on his part, is, I am convinced, not altogether
destitute of interest with regard to me. You will not see him make any
severe complaints against me, nor prefer, in particular, any direct and
personal accusation against me, any more than the other sovereigns.
There may, perhaps, be some vague and vulgar declamations against
ambition and bad faith, but nothing positive and direct; because
statesmen are well aware, that when the hour of libels is past, no one
would be allowed to prefer a public accusation without corroborative
proofs, and they have none of these to produce: such will be the
province of history. On the other hand, there will be at most but some
wretched chroniclers, shallow enough to take the ravings of clubs, or
intrigues, for authentic facts, or some writers of memoirs, who,
deceived by the errors of the moment, will be dead before they are
enabled to correct their mistakes.
“When the real particulars of my disputes with the Pope shall be made
public, the world will be surprised at the extent of my patience, for it
is known that I could not put up with a great deal. When he left me,
after my coronation, he felt a secret spite at not having obtained the
compensations which he thought he had deserved. But, however grateful I
might have been in other respects, I could not, after all, make a
traffic of the interests of the empire by way of paying my own
obligations, and, I was, besides, too proud to seem to have purchased
his kindnesses. He had hardly set his foot on the soil of Italy, when
the intriguers and mischief-makers, the enemies of France, took
advantage of the disposition he was in, to govern his conduct, and from
that instant every thing was hostile on his part. He no longer was the
gentle, the peaceable Chiaramonti, that worthy bishop of Imola, who had
at so early a period shown himself worthy of the enlightened state of
the age. His signature was thenceforth affixed to acts only which
characterised the Gregories and Bonifaces more than him. Rome became the
focus of all the plots hatched against us. I strove in vain to bring him
back by the force of reason, but I found it impossible to ascertain his
sentiments. The wrongs became so serious, and the insults offered to us
so flagrant, that I was imperatively called upon to act, in my turn. I,
therefore, seized his fortresses; I took possession of some provinces;
and I finished by occupying Rome itself, at the same time declaring and
strictly observing that I held him sacred in his spiritual capacity,
which was far from being satisfactory to him. A crisis, however,
presented itself; it was believed, that fortune had abandoned me at
Essling, and measures were in immediate readiness for exciting the
population of that great capital to insurrection. The officer, who
commanded there, thought that he could escape the danger only by getting
rid of the Pope, whom he sent off to France. That measure was carried
into effect without my orders, and was even in direct opposition to my
views. I despatched instant orders for stopping the Pope, wherever he
might be met with, and he was kept at Savona, where he was treated with
every possible care and attention; for I wished to make myself feared,
but not to ill-treat him; to bend him to my views, not to degrade him;—I
entertained very different projects! This removal served only to inflame
the spirit of resentment and intrigue. Until then, the quarrel had been
but temporal; the Pope’s advisers, in the hope of re-establishing their
affairs, involved it in all the jumble of spirituality. I then found it
necessary to carry on the contest with him on that head; I had my
council of conscience, my ecclesiastical councils, and I invested my
imperial courts with the power of deciding in cases of appeal from
abuses; for my soldiers could be of no further use in all this: I felt
it necessary to fight the Pope with his own weapons. To his men of
erudition, to his sophists, his civilians, and his scribes, it was
incumbent upon me to oppose mine.
“An English plot was laid to carry him off from Savona; it was of
service to me, I caused him to be removed to Fontainebleau; but that was
to be the period of his sufferings, and the regeneration of his
splendour. All my grand views were accomplished in disguise and mystery.
I had brought things to such a point, as to render the development
infallible, without any exertion, and in a way altogether natural. It
was accordingly consecrated by the Pope in the famous Concordat of
Fontainebleau, in spite even of my disasters at Moscow. What then would
have been the result, had I returned victorious and triumphant? I had
consequently obtained the separation, which was so desirable, of the
spiritual from the temporal, which is so injurious to his Holiness, and
the commixture of which produces disorder in society, in the name and by
the hands of him who ought himself to be the centre of harmony: and from
that time I intended to exalt the Pope beyond measure, to surround him
with grandeur and honours. I should have succeeded in suppressing all
his anxiety for the loss of his temporal power; I should have made an
idol of him; he would have remained near my person. Paris would have
become the capital of the Christian world, and I should have governed
the religious as well as the political world. It was an additional means
of binding tighter all the federative parts of the empire, and of
preserving the tranquillity of every thing placed without it. I should
have had my religious as well as my legislative sessions; my councils
would have constituted the representation of Christendom, and the Popes
would have been only the presidents. I should have called together and
dissolved those assemblies, approved and published their discussions, as
Constantine and Charlemagne had done; and if that supremacy had escaped
the Emperors, it was because they had committed the blunder of letting
the spiritual heads reside at a distance from them; and the latter took
advantage of the weakness of the princes, or of critical events, to
shake off their dependence and to enslave them in their turn.
“But,” resumed the Emperor, “to accomplish that object, I had found it
requisite to manœuvre with a great deal of dexterity; above all, to
conceal my real way of thinking, to give a direction, altogether
different to general opinion, and to feed the public with vulgar trifles
for the purpose of more effectually concealing the importance and depth
of my secret design. I accordingly experienced a kind of satisfaction on
finding myself accused of barbarity towards the Pope, and of tyranny in
religious matters. Foreigners, in particular, promoted my wishes in this
respect, by filling their wretched libels with invectives against my
pitiful ambition, which, according to them, had driven me to devour the
miserable patrimony of Saint Peter. But I was perfectly aware, that
public opinion would again declare itself in my favour at home, and that
no means could exist abroad for disconcerting my plan. What measures
would not have been employed for its prevention, had it been anticipated
at a seasonable period; for how vast its future ascendency over all the
Catholic countries, and how great its influence even upon those that are
not so, by the co-operation of the members of that religion who are
spread throughout these countries!”
The Emperor said, that this deliverance from the Court of Rome, this
legal union, the control of religion in the hands of the sovereign, had
been, for a long time, the constant object of his meditations and his
wishes. England, Russia, the northern crowns, and part of Germany, are,
he said, in possession of it. Venice and Naples had enjoyed it. No
government can be carried on without it; a nation is otherwise, every
instant, affected in its tranquillity, its dignity, its independence.
But the task,” he added, “was very difficult; at every step I was alive
to the danger. I was induced to think, that, once engaged in it, I
should be abandoned by the nation. I more than once sounded and strove
to elicit public opinion, but in vain, and I have been enabled to
convince myself that I never should have had the national co-operation.
And this explains a sally, which I had witnessed.”
The Emperor perceiving, at one of those grand Sunday audiences, which
were very numerously attended, the Archbishop of Tours (de Barral)
addressed him in a very elevated tone; “Well! Monsieur l’Archevêque, how
do our affairs with the Pope go on?—‘Sire, the deputation of your
bishops is about to set out for Savona.’ Very well! endeavour to make
the Pope listen to reason; prevail upon him to conduct himself with
prudence; otherwise, the consequences will be unpleasant. Tell him
plainly, that he is no longer in the times of the Gregories, and that I
am not a Débonnaire. He has the example of Henry the VIIIth., and,
without his wickedness, I possess more strength and power than he had.
Let him know, that whatever part I may take, I have 600,000 Frenchmen in
arms, who, in every contingency will march with me, for me, and as
myself. The peasantry and mechanics look to me alone, and repose
unlimited confidence in me. The prudent and enlightened part of the
intermediate class, those who take care of their interest, and wish for
tranquillity, will follow me; the only class favourable to him will be
the meddling and talkative, who, will forget him at the end of ten days,
to chat upon some fresh subject.”
And as the archbishop, who betrayed his embarrassment by his
countenance, was about to stammer out some words, the Emperor added in a
greatly softened tone: “You are out of all this; I participate in your
doctrines; I honour your piety; I respect your character!”
The Emperor, I now understand him perfectly, had, no doubt, merely
thrown out those observations, in order that we might give effect to
them in other places; but he deceived himself with respect to our
dispositions, or at least to those of the palace. Some, the least
reflecting part, were decided and loud in censuring his conduct on these
occasions; others, with the best intentions, were extremely cautious not
to let a word transpire, lest it should prove injurious to him in the
public opinion; for, such was, in general, our misconception, our
singular manner of understanding and explaining the Emperor’s meaning,
that, although without any bad design, and solely through levity,
incoherency, or for fashion’s sake, instead of making him popular, we
were perhaps the very persons who did him most injury. I very well
remember that, on the morning when that famous concordat of
Fontainebleau unexpectedly appeared in the Moniteur, some persons
confidentially assured each other in the saloons of St. Cloud, that
nothing was less authentic than that document, and that it was a base
fabrication. Others whispered, that it was, no doubt, genuine in the
main points, but that it had been extracted from the Pope by the
Emperor’s anger and violence. To that I should not be surprised, if the
piquant dramatic episode of Napoleon, at Fontainebleau, _dragging the
father of the faithful by his white hair_, was not precisely the
invention of the political proser who wrote it, but caught up from the
mouths of the courtiers and even of the Emperor’s servants themselves;
and this is the way in which history is written!
WARM CONVERSATION WITH THE GOVERNOR, IN THE
ADMIRAL’S PRESENCE.
18th. The weather was most dreadful during the whole of the night and
day. About three o’clock, the Emperor took advantage of its clearing up
a little and went out. He came to my apartment, and we called on General
Gourgaud, who was indisposed. We then visited Madame de Montholon, who
accompanied us to the garden. The Emperor was in excellent spirits,
which enlivened the conversation. He undertook to persuade Madame de
Montholon to make a general confession, particularly insisting upon her
setting out with her first sin. “Come,” said he, “speak out without
apprehension, do not let our neighbour constrain you; consider him
merely as your confessor; we shall forget it all in a quarter of an
hour.”
And I really believe he would have succeeded in persuading her, when the
Governor unfortunately came to interrupt so pleasant a scene; he made
his appearance, and the Emperor to avoid receiving him, hastily took
shelter in the bottom of the wood. We were joined in a few moments by M.
de Montholon, who acquainted the Emperor that the Governor and the
Admiral earnestly requested the honour of speaking with him. He thought
that some communication was to be made on their part, and returned to
the garden, where he received them.
We remained behind, with the Governor’s officers. The conversation soon
became animated on the part of the Emperor, who, as he walked between
the Governor and the Admiral, almost uniformly addressed himself to the
latter, even when he spoke to the former. We continued at too great a
distance to hear any thing distinctly; but I have since learned, that he
again repeated, and with, perhaps, more energy and warmth, all that he
said to him in the preceding conversations.
In consequence of the favourable explanations, which the Admiral, who
acted the part of mediator, laboured to give of the Governor’s
intentions, the Emperor observed: “The faults of M. Lowe proceed from
his habits of life. He has never had the command of any but foreign
deserters, of Piedmontese, Corsicans, and Sicilians, all renegadoes, and
traitors to their country; the dregs and scum of Europe. If he had
commanded Englishmen; if he were one himself, he would shew respect to
those who have a right to be honoured.” At another time, the Emperor
declared, that there was a moral courage, as necessary as courage on the
field of battle; that M. Lowe did not exercise it here with regard to
us, in dreaming only of our escape, instead of employing the only real,
prudent, reasonable, and sensible means for preventing it. The Emperor
also told him that, although his body was in the hands of evil-minded
men, his soul was as lofty and independent as when at the head of
400,000 men, or on the throne, when he disposed of kingdoms.
To the article respecting the reduction of our expenses, and the money
which was required of the Emperor, he answered: “All those details are
very painful to me; they are mean. You might place me on the burning
pile of Montezuma or Guatimozin without extracting from me gold, which I
do not possess. Besides, who asks you for any thing? Who entreats you to
feed me? When you discontinue your supply of provisions, those brave
soldiers, whom you see there,” pointing, with his hand, to the camp of
the 53d, “will take pity on me; I shall place myself at the grenadiers’
table, and they will not, I am confident, drive away the first, the
oldest soldier of Europe.”
The Emperor having reproached the Governor with having kept some books,
which were addressed to him, he answered, that he had done so in
consequence of their having been sent under the address of _Emperor_.
“And who,” replied the Emperor, with emotion, “gave you the right of
disputing that title? In a few years, your Lord Castlereagh, your Lord
Bathurst, and all the others—you, who speak to me—will be buried in the
dust of oblivion, or if your names be remembered, it will be only on
account of the indignity with which you have treated me, while the
Emperor Napoleon shall, doubtless, continue for ever the subject, the
ornament of history, and the star of civilized nations. Your libels are
of no avail against me; you have expended millions on them; what have
they produced? Truth pierces through the clouds, it shines like the sun,
and like it, is imperishable.”
The Emperor admitted that he had, during this conversation, seriously
and repeatedly offended Sir Hudson Lowe; and he also did him the justice
to acknowledge, that Sir Hudson Lowe had not precisely shewn, in a
single instance, any want of respect; he had contented himself with
muttering, between his teeth, sentences which were not audible. He once
said that he had solicited his recal, and the Emperor observed, that
that was the most agreeable word he could possibly have said. He also
said, that we endeavoured to blacken his character in Europe, but that
our conduct, in that respect, was a matter of indifference to him. The
only disrespect, perhaps, said the Emperor, on the part of the Governor,
and which was trifling, compared with the treatment he had received, was
the abrupt way in which he retired, while the Admiral withdrew slowly,
and with numerous salutes. “The Admiral was precisely then,” observed
the Emperor, in a gay tone of voice, “what the Marquis de Gallo was at
the time of my rupture of Passeriano.”—An allusion to one of the
chapters of the Campaign in Italy, which he had dictated to me.
The Emperor remarked that, after all, he had to reproach himself with
that scene. “I must see this officer no more; he makes me fly into a
violent passion; it is beneath my dignity; expressions escape me which
would have been unpardonable at the Tuileries; if they can at all be
excused here, it is because I am in his hands and subject to his power.”
After dinner, the Emperor caused a letter to be read, in answer to the
Governor, who had officially sent the treaty of the 2nd of August, by
which the allied Sovereigns stipulated for the imprisonment of Napoleon.
Sir Hudson Lowe, by the same conveyance, asked to introduce the foreign
Commissioners to Longwood. The Emperor had, in the course of the day,
dictated the letter to M. de Montholon. It was his wish, that every one
of us should make his objections, and state his opinions. It seemed to
us a master-piece of dignity, energy, and sound reasoning.
THE CONVERSATION WITH THE GOVERNOR AGAIN NOTICED, &C.—EFFECT OF THE
LIBELS AGAINST NAPOLEON.—TREATY OF FONTAINEBLEAU.—THE WORK OF GENERAL
S——N.
19th.—The weather continued as dreadful as we had ever seen it. It has
been, for several days, like one of our equinoctial storms in Europe.
The Emperor exposed himself to it, to come to my apartment about ten
o’clock; in going out, he struck one of his legs against a nail near the
door; his stocking was torn halfway down the leg; luckily the skin was
only scratched. He was obliged to return to change. “You owe me a pair
of stockings,” he said, while his valet de chambre was putting on
another pair; “a polite man does not expose his visitors to such dangers
in his apartments. You are lodged too much like a seaman; it is true,
that is not your fault. I thought myself careless about these matters,
but you actually surpass me.”—“Sire,” I answered, “my merit is not
great, no choice is left me. I am truly a hog in its mire, I must
confess; but as your Majesty says, it is not altogether my fault.”
We went into the garden, when it had cleared up for a moment. The
Emperor reverted to the conversation which he had yesterday with the
Governor, in the Admiral’s presence, and again reproached himself with
the violence of his expressions. “It would have been more worthy of me,
more consistent and more dignified, to have expressed all these things
with perfect composure; they would, besides, have been more impressive.”
He recollected, in particular, a name which had escaped him as applied
to Sir H. Lowe (_scribe d’etat-major_,) which must have shocked him, and
the more so because it expressed the truth, and that, we know, is always
offensive. “I have myself,” said the Emperor, “experienced that feeling
in the island of Elba. When I ran over the most infamous libels, they
did not affect me even in the slightest manner. When I was told or read,
that I had _strangled_, _poisoned_, _ravished_; that I had massacred my
sick; that my carriage had been driven over my wounded; I laughed out of
commiseration. How often did I not then say to Madame: ‘Make haste,
mother, come and see the _savage_, the _man-tiger, the devourer of the
human race_; come and admire your child!’ But when there was a slight
approach to truth, the effect was no longer the same; I felt the
necessity of defending myself; I accumulated reasons for my
justification, and even then, it never happened, that I was left without
some traces of a secret torment. My dear Las Cases, such is man!”
The Emperor passed from this subject to his protest against the treaty
of the 2nd of August, which had been read to us after dinner. I presumed
to ask him, whether after noticing in a conspicuous manner the
acknowledgment of his title of Emperor by the English, during their
negotiations at Paris and Chatillon, he had not forgotten that, which
they must have made on occasion of the treaty of Fontainebleau, and
which, it struck me, was omitted. “It was,” he quickly replied, “done on
purpose; I have nothing to do with that treaty; I disclaim it; I am far
from boasting of it, I am rather ashamed of it. It was discussed for me.
I was betrayed by N——, who brought it to me. That epoch belongs to my
history, but to my history on a large scale. If I had then determined to
treat in a sensible manner, I should have obtained the kingdom of Italy,
Tuscany, or Corsica,—all that I could have desired. My decision was the
result of a fault inherent in my character, a caprice on my part, a real
constitutional excess. I was seized with a dislike and contempt of every
thing around me; I was affected with the same feeling for fortune, which
I took delight in defying. I cast my eye on a spot of land, where I
might be uncomfortable and take advantage of the mistakes that might be
made. I fixed upon the island of Elba. It was the act of a soul of rock.
I am, no doubt, my dear Las Cases, of a very singular disposition, but
we should not be extraordinary, were we not of a peculiar mould; I am a
piece of rock, launched into space! You will not, perhaps, easily
believe me, but I do not regret my grandeur, you see me slightly
affected by what I have lost.”
“And why, Sire,” I observed, “should I not believe you? What have you to
regret?... The life of man is but an atom in the duration of history,
but with regard to your majesty, the one is already so full, that you
scarcely ought to take any interest but in the other; if your body
suffers here, your memory is enriched a hundred-fold. Had it been your
lot to end your days in the bosom of uninterrupted prosperity, how many
grand and striking circumstances would have passed away unknown! You
yourself, Sire, have assured me of this, and I have remained impressed
with the force of that truth. Not a day, in fact, passes in which those,
who were your enemies, do not repeat with us, who are your faithful
servants, that you are unquestionably greater here than in the
Tuileries. And even on this rock, to which you have been transferred by
violence and perfidy, do you not still command? Your jailors, your
masters, are at your feet; your soul captivates every one that comes
near you; you shew yourself what history represents St. Louis in the
chains of the Saracens, the real master of his conquerors. Your
irresistible ascendancy accompanies you here. We, who are all about you,
Sire, entertain this opinion of you; the Russian commissioner expressed
the same sentiment, we are assured, the other day, and it is felt by
those who guard you. What have you to regret?”
On our return the Emperor, in spite of the storm, ordered his breakfast
in the tent, and kept me with him. The rain did not penetrate; the only
inconvenience was a considerable degree of damp; but the squalls of wind
and rain whirled round us, and vented themselves far before us, towards
the bottom of the valley; the spectacle was not destitute of beauty.
The Emperor retired about two o’clock; he sent for me some time
afterwards to his cabinet. “I have,” said he, laying down the book, just
read General S——n; he is a madman, a hair-brained fellow, he writes
nonsense. He is, however, after all, readable and amusing; he cuts up,
dissects, judges, and pronounces sentence upon men and things. He does
not hesitate to give advice, in several instances, to Wellington, and
asserts, that he ought to have made some campaigns under Kleber, &c.
Kleber was no doubt a great general, but the notice taken of Soult is
not precisely the best part of the book; he is an excellent director, a
good minister at war.
“This S——n,” he continued, “deserted from the camp at Boulogne, carrying
all my secrets to the English; that might have been attended with
serious consequences. S——n was a general officer; his conduct was
dreadful and unpardonable. But observe how a man, in the moment of
revolution, may be a bad character, impudent, and shameless. I found
him, on my return from the island of Elba; he waited for me with
confidence, and wrote a long letter in which he attempted to make me his
dupe. The English, he said, were miserable creatures; he had been a long
time among them; he was acquainted with their means and resources, and
could be very useful to me. He knew that I was too magnanimous, too
great, to remember the wrongs I had suffered from him. I ordered him to
be arrested, and as he had been already tried and condemned, I am at a
loss to know why he was not shot. Either there was not time to carry his
sentence into effect, or he was forgotten. There can be no forbearance,
no indulgence for the general, who has the infamy to prostitute himself
to a foreign power.”
The Grand Marshal came in; the Emperor, after continuing the
conversation for some time, took him away to play at chess. He suffered
much from the badness of the weather.
After dinner, he read Le Tartuffe; but he was so fatigued, that he could
not get through it. He laid down the book, and, after paying a just
tribute of eulogy to Moliere, he concluded in a manner which we little
expected. “The whole of the Tartuffe,” he remarked, “is, unquestionably,
finished with the hand of a master, it is one of the best pieces of an
inimitable writer. It is, however, marked with such a character, that I
am not at all surprised, that its appearance should have been the
subject of interesting negotiations at Versailles, and of a great deal
of hesitation on the part of Louis XIV. If I have a right to be
astonished at any thing, it is at his allowing it to be performed. In my
opinion, it holds out devotion under such odious colours; a certain
scene presents so decisive a situation, so completely indecent, that,
for my own part, I do not hesitate to say, if the comedy had been
written in my time, I would not have allowed it to be represented.”