Note 90 — Chapter VI
Reading edition
The Emperor Napoleon died at St. Helena on the 5th of May, 1821. The intelligence was conveyed from Calais to Paris by telegraph. “There was a disposition,” says Lord Holland, “in the people of Paris to disbelieve in the death of Napoleon, there was more in the middling classes to attribute it to poison, and there was some in the Court to affect the magnanimity of stifling all resentment towards the departed hero. Mourning was worn by many, especially on the 15th August, the festival of St. Napoleon. Publications on his character, life, and death, were numerous, and generally more full of commendation than of censure. Portraits, engravings, and prints in allusion to his exile and death were bought up with an avidity which alarmed the police, and led to the temporary suppression of the exhibition of such articles in the shops.”—Foreign Reminiscences, p. 205.