MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE, EXILE, AND CONVERSATIONS, OF THE EMPEROR NAPOLEON. (continued 9)

After dinner, when we were debating what we should read, the Emperor said that, since we confessed we had not wit enough to relate each his tale or story, we ought at least to be condemned to choose, by turns, our evening’s reading; and he began by naming for his part, the poem De la Pitié, by the Abbé Delille. He thought the verses good, the language pure, the ideas pleasing; nevertheless, he observed, it was destitute of imagination or warmth. It was, undoubtedly, superior in versification to Voltaire; but still far beneath our other great masters.

Saturday, 29th.—The Emperor breakfasted in the garden, and invited us all. After breakfast he took an airing in the calash. He was in good spirits, and rallied us all in our turns. One he complimented on the beauty and elegance of his apartments, another on the sums which the Governor had paid for him, and which would soon be increased by a handsome stock of child-bed linen; me he congratulated on the taste which the Governor seemed to have for my bills of exchange, which had induced his Excellency to wish the rest to draw bills likewise. He laughed, and was highly amused with our remarks on each other. The weather suddenly changed and obliged him to return home.

After dinner, the Emperor read some passages of Milton, translated by the Abbé Delille. He thought the versification very inferior to the poem De la Pitié; and, in fact, it was a work prescribed to the author, written during his emigration, whilst at London, and published by subscription.

362During the whole of our morning’s ride, the conversation turned on our kings and their mistresses: Mesdames de Montespan, de Pompadour, Dubarry, &c. The principle was warmly discussed, opinions differed, and were obstinately defended. The Emperor amused himself with fluctuating alternately from one opinion to another. He concluded, however, by deciding in favour of morality.

POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE COURT OF LONDON DURING OUR EMIGRATION.—GEORGE III.—MR. PITT.—THE PRINCE OF WALES.—ANECDOTES.—THE NASSAUS.—REMARKABLE DIGRESSION OF NAPOLEON TO HIS OWN HISTORY.

Sunday, 30th.—The Emperor desired me to be called early in the morning to breakfast with him; he was sad, gloomy, and unable to converse; he could not find words. Chance having produced the mention of London and of my emigration, the Emperor said, by way of fixing on a subject, and finding something to occupy his attention, “You must have seen in London, the Court, the King, the Prince of Wales, Mr. Pitt, Mr. Fox, and other great personages who figured at that time? Tell me what you know of them. What did people think of them? Give me an historical sketch.”—"Sire, your Majesty forgets, or perhaps was never precisely informed of the situation of an emigrant in London. I doubt whether we should have been received at Court; the good old George III. was deeply concerned for our personal misfortunes, but he was extremely reluctant to avow us in a political sense. And if we could have been received there, our means would not have enabled us to appear. I did not therefore go to Court. I have, however, seen most of those whom your Majesty mentions, and I have also heard much said of them.

"I have seen and heard the King several times in the House of Lords, and been very near him; the Prince of Wales in the same place, and also in company in the metropolis. Besides, it is not in London as in France; we do not find there that immense distance between 363the Court and the mass of the nation; the country is so crowded, information so general, education so equal, affluence so common, and the sphere of activity so rapid, that the whole nation seems to be in the same place and on the same plane; whilst, in looking at this assemblage, which might deserve to be called distinguished, one is tempted to ask, Where is the people? which is, in fact, the question that Alexander is said to have asked at the time of his visit to London. It follows then, that having seen many people of all classes, conditions, and opinions, I must have imbibed some notions approaching in all probability very near the truth. Unluckily, I was then little solicitous about observing and collecting information; and I am likewise fearful that the lapse of so much time may now confuse my memory.

"George the Third was the honestest man in his dominions; his personal virtues made him an object of profound veneration; an extreme morality, and great respect for the laws, were the principal characteristics of his whole life. He came to the throne at twenty years of age, deeply enamoured of a charming young Scotch lady, of one of the first families in the country, it was much feared that he would marry her; but it was sufficient to remind him that it was contrary to law, and he instantly consented to marry the person who should be chosen for him. This was a princess of Mecklenburg. In his grief, he thought her very ordinary, and in fact she was so; nevertheless George III. remained all his life an exemplary husband; he was never known to be guilty of the least infidelity.

"The accession of George III. was an actual political revolution in England: the days of the Pretenders were over; the house of Hanover was established; the Whigs, who had placed that family on the throne, were dismissed from administration: they were troublesome observers, who were no longer wanted. The government was again seized by the Tories, those friends of power, who have ever since kept it, to the great detriment of public liberty.

"The King, however, was personally free from prejudice in this respect: he sincerely loved the laws, justice, 364and the welfare and prosperity of his country. The violent part taken by England against our French revolution was much less the fault of George III. than of Mr. Pitt, who was the real firebrand. The latter was instigated by the extreme hatred to France which he inherited from his father, the great Chatham, and also by a strong predilection for power and the oligarchy. At the commencement of our revolution, Mr. Pitt was the man of the people: he governed England; he drew in the King, who was always to be worked on by facts; and it must be acknowledged that the excesses and crimes of our outset afforded very favourable opportunities to the measures and the eloquence of Mr. Pitt. It is probable, Sire, that if the unfortunate George III. had retained his reason, your Majesty would eventually have found it greatly to your advantage, because your reign would have presented new facts to his observation, to which he would have yielded. George III. had his own species and degree of character: it was in harmony with his intellectual conceptions: he wished to know things, to be convinced. When once his resolution was taken, it was difficult to make him alter it; yet it was not impossible: his good sense afforded great opportunities.

"His illness was, on this account, a curse to us, a curse to Europe, and to the English themselves, who begin now to give up the high opinion they once professed of Mr. Pitt, of whose fatal errors they now feel the effects.

"It was the first attack of the King’s illness which established the reputation and credit of Mr. Pitt. That minister was little more than twenty-five years of age, when he ventured alone to encounter the mass of those who deserted the King and considered him lost; and who were eager to proclaim the monarch’s incapacity, in order to possess themselves of power under his youthful successor. This conduct rendered Mr. Pitt the idol of the nation. This was the most glorious period of his life; and his noblest triumph was, undoubtedly, that of conducting George III. to St. Paul’s, to return thanks to God for his restoration to health, amidst an immense 365concourse of people intoxicated with joy and satisfaction.

"There was no doubt that Mr. Pitt was on this occasion the saviour of the King as well as of the public peace; for experience proved that George III. had not become incapable of reigning again; and it was strongly suspected that, had the regency been organized, as the Opposition wished to have it, this capability would not have been very readily acknowledged at a subsequent period; and thus a civil war might have been occasioned.

"I have often heard it said that the mental derangement of George III. was not a common kind of madness: that his alienation did not exactly arise from a local affection of the brain, but from the repletion of the vessels leading to it; a derangement produced by a malady which had long been peculiar to this family. His disorder, it was said, was rather delirium than insanity. When the cause was removed, the sovereign instantly recovered all his faculties, in as great perfection as if they had sustained no interruption; this circumstance explains his numerous relapses and restorations. As a proof of this, people used to mention the strength of mind he must have possessed, to be able, immediately on his first convalescence, to support the pomp of the procession, attended by the assembled population of London, filling the air with acclamations.

"After his second relapse, he gave another not less remarkable proof of this nature, by the calmness and composure which he displayed, when fired at by an assassin, as he entered his box at the theatre. He was so little disturbed that he instantly turned to the Queen, who had just reached the door of the box, to tell her not to be alarmed, for that it was only a squib which had been let off in the theatre: he remained during the whole performance apparently unmoved. Here was certainly no proof of weakness. The permanence of the complaint in his latter years might indeed be opposed to these facts, if it be certain that he had not long lucid intervals.

"George III., although so worthy and well-meaning a monarch, was several times very near falling a victim to assassins. Several instances of this kind occur in his 366history; and I do not believe any of the persons implicated suffered death, because they all appeared to be insane—all religious or political fanatics. The last and most famous attempt occurred, I think, in 1800.^[26] The King went to the theatre, as he did from time to time at that critical period, to keep up his popularity. As he entered his box, a man in the pit took aim at him with a horse pistol, and the ball only missed through the King’s bowing at the moment to salute the public. The dreadful tumult that ensued may easily be conceived! The man did not attempt to deny his crime; he was precisely such another as the fanatic at Schoenbrun, who would have sacrificed your Majesty, and always maintained that he had no other object in view than peace and the happiness of his country. A jury pronounced this man insane, and he was condemned to confinement.

"During my excursion to London in 1814, a singular chance procured me a sight of this very assassin. My mind being still occupied with the mission which your Majesty had confided to me the preceding year, concerning the depôts of mendicity and houses of correction, I wished to see the English establishments of this kind. Whilst I was taking a minute survey of Newgate, I entered an apartment in which I found a great number of condemned persons enjoying a certain degree of liberty. The first on whom my conductor fixed his eyes happened to be Hatfield, whom he pointed out to me, and whose name I immediately recollected, and asked if he was the man who had attempted to assassinate George III. It was the same, he said, and he was undergoing the confinement to which he had been condemned, as insane, in Newgate. I observed that, at the time, his insanity had been much doubted and contested by the public, as it always happens in such cases. I was assured, however, that Hatfield was indisputably mad, but only by fits; that his madness was, however, so mild that he was suffered to go about the town, on his word; and that he was the first to request he might be attended to, when he felt that 367his disorder was coming on. My conductor then called him. Having ventured to ask him some questions, he immediately discovered me to be French by my accent, and told me he had often fought against my countrymen in Flanders. (He had served in the light-horse, or dragoons, under the Duke of York.) He bore their marks, he said, shewing me several scars; and yet, he added, he was far from hating them, for they were brave, and were not to blame in that affair; people had insisted on meddling in their disputes, which concerned themselves only. He began to grow very warm, which induced my conductor to make me a sign, and to send him away. We had touched the chord of his derangement, my conductor observed, and had we continued, he would have become outrageous.

"But I return to George III. The predominant sentiment of that prince was the love of the public good and the welfare of his country. To these he always sacrificed every consideration: this alone induced him to retain Mr. Pitt so long, towards whom he felt a strong repugnance, because he was very ill-treated by that minister.

"The crisis was of the most vital importance to England; the danger most imminent; the talents of the Prime Minister of a superior kind. He was, therefore, necessary. Presuming on the omnipotence of this circumstance over the King’s mind, Mr. Pitt ruled him tyrannically, and without the least delicacy; he scarcely allowed him the disposal of the most trifling place. If there was a vacancy, and the King wished to reward a private servant of his own, he was always too late; Mr. Pitt had already disposed of it, and for the good of the state, he would say—for the sake of parliamentary services. If the King shewed too much dissatisfaction, Mr. Pitt had one invariable answer constantly ready—he would resign and give up his place to another. At length a circumstance occurred of the most delicate kind, as it concerned the King’s conscience, who was very religious; that is to say, the question of the emancipation of the Catholics of Ireland, to which he obstinately refused to consent. Mr. Pitt insisted with equal perseverance; 368he was pledged to this measure, he said, and resorted to his usual threat. But the King this time took him at his word, and, overjoyed at his deliverance, repeated the same day, to several persons, that he had now got rid of a man who had for twenty years been kicking at him. And it may not, perhaps, be useless to observe here, as a remarkable singularity, in contrast to Mr. Pitt’s ill usage of the King, that George III. has been heard to say that, of all his ministers, Mr. Fox (so much accused of republicanism, and perhaps not without foundation) was the person who, when at the head of affairs, had constantly shewn him the greatest delicacy, deference, respect, and attention.

"Nevertheless, such was the influence of the public interest over the King’s mind that, notwithstanding all his aversion, he reinstated Mr. Pitt a year afterwards. It was thought, at the time, that when Mr. Pitt retired he had had the address to fix Mr. Addington, a creature of his own, in the ministry, in order to be able to replace himself there in a short time without difficulty: but it has since been proved that Mr. Pitt himself was obliged to have recourse to intrigues to overthrow his successor and obtain his second administration, which, however, was by no means worthy of him: it was filled with disasters which he himself had occasioned. The ball that decided the victory of Austerlitz killed him in London.

"Time daily undermines the great reputation of Mr. Pitt, not with respect to his eminent talents, but their fatal employment. England groans under the calamities with which he overwhelmed her, the most fatal of which are the school and the doctrines he bequeathed to her. He introduced the police into England, accustomed the nation to an armed force, and commenced that system of informations, snares, and demoralization of every kind so completely perfected by his successors.

“His great system of tactics was constantly to excite our excesses on the Continent, and then to hold them up as a scarecrow to England, which immediately granted him all he wanted.” “But what did you all say to that?” asked the Emperor: “What was the opinion of the 369emigrants?”—"Sire," I replied, “we all constantly saw through the same glass; what we said the first day of our emigration we still repeated on the last day of our exile. We had not advanced one step; we had become and remained a people by ourselves. Mr. Pitt was our oracle; whatever was said by him, by Burke, Windham, or any of the most violent on that side of the question, appeared to us to be delicious; all that their adversaries objected, abominable. Fox, Sheridan, and Grey, were in our eyes nothing but infamous Jacobins; we never called them by any other name.” “Very well,” said the Emperor; “now return to George III.”

"This virtuous prince was excessively partial to private life and rural occupations; he devoted all the time he could spare from the business of the state to the cultivation of a farm a few miles from London; he never returned to the capital except for his regular levées, or extraordinary councils required by circumstances; and he immediately returned to his fields, where he lived without pomp, and like an honest farmer, as he said himself. All intrigues were left in town, about the ministers, and amongst them.

"George III. had many domestic troubles. His sister was Matilda Queen of Denmark, whose story forms so melancholy a romance; his two brothers caused him many vexations by their marriages; and he had not reason to be perfectly satisfied with his eldest son.

“The two brothers of George III. were the Duke of Cumberland and the Duke of Gloucester. I often saw the latter in private society; he was the worthiest, most polite, and honourable gentleman in England. Both these illustrious individuals, according to the spirit of the British constitution, were entirely strangers to public business. The King heard that one of them had married or was about to marry a private individual. This was a great crime in his estimation; he had himself made a great sacrifice to avoid committing it. He was extremely angry; and whilst he was sending a message to Parliament against the brother who had thus given offence, he was informed that the other had eloped to Calais for a 370similar purpose. It was like a fatality, an absolute epidemic, for it was at the same time reported on all sides, that the heir-apparent himself was also secretly married.”—"What," said the Emperor, “the Prince of Wales!”—"Yes, Sire, himself: his marriage was every where talked of, but with circumstances not sufficiently certain for me to venture to repeat them; the fact, however, seemed generally acknowledged. But, as the Prince afterwards caused it to be contradicted in Parliament, through the medium of the opposition, we are bound after that to believe him.

"I have it, however, from the mouth of a very near relation of his pretended wife, that the matter was positively so. I heard this person give way to the most violent rage on the solemn marriage of the prince, and threaten to resort to personal violence. It might, therefore, be considered a contested point, which was unavoidably represented according to party-spirit; some obstinately maintaining the reality of the marriage, whilst others denied it in the most violent manner. Perhaps this contradiction might be reconciled by the consideration that the person he was said to have married, Mrs. Fitzherbert, was a Catholic. This circumstance rendered the marriage impossible in the eyes of the law, and perfectly void with respect to the heir to the throne. However this may be, I have often met Mrs. Fitzherbert in company: her carriage bore the Prince’s arms, and her servants wore his livery. This lady was much older than himself; but beautiful, agreeable, of a powerful mind, and haughty, impatient temper, which often involved her in disputes with the Prince, and gave rise, it was said, to scenes of violence not very becoming such elevated rank. It was during one of the last quarrels of this kind, when, they say, Mrs. Fitzherbert had obstinately kept the door shut against the Prince, that Mr. Pitt dexterously took the opportunity of persuading him to consent to a marriage with the Princess of Brunswick."—"But stay," said the Emperor, “you go too fast; you pass over what chiefly interests me. Under what auspices did the Prince of Wales enter into life? What was there peculiar in his political conduct, 371his situation with regard to the Opposition, and so forth?”—"This Prince, Sire, came before the public with all the advantages of face, person, and mind. He was greeted with universal enthusiasm; but he soon evinced those inclinations, and began to act that part, which seemed necessarily imposed on great personages in the middle of the last century. Such were the infatuation of gaming, and its consequent embarrassments; table and other excesses; and, above all, a set of companions disapproved of by the public. Then it was that all generous hearts were grieved; hope was blighted, and the middling class, which in every country really constitutes the nation, and which, it must be confessed, is in England the most moral population of all Europe, despaired of the future. It was a received adage in England, amongst the lower classes in particular, that the Prince of Wales would never reign; the fortune-tellers and conjurors, it was said, had foretold it to himself.

“The opposition, into whose arms he had thrown himself, as heirs presumptive too frequently do; the opposition, whose stay and hope he was, perhaps trying to deceive themselves, when this misconduct was mentioned to them, used to get over it by saying that he would be another Henry V.; that Henry V. had been extremely dissipated when Prince of Wales; but that he became the greatest King the monarchy had produced; and thence they concluded that the Prince of Wales would make one of their greatest kings.”—"But did he adopt the revolutionary party and defend our modern ideas?" said the Emperor. "No, Sire; as the fever of revolutionary principles increased, decency compelled him to withdraw by degrees from the opposition which defended them. He relinquished all ostensible alliance, and filled up the void of his life by giving himself up to pleasure and its attendant difficulties. He was constantly overwhelmed with debts, although parliament had already paid them several times. By these encumbrances he was greatly embarrassed, and his character and popularity were endangered. It was whilst thus involved, and during a quarrel with Mrs. Fitzherbert, that Mr. Pitt 372got hold of him, offering to pay his debts again, if he would adopt his father’s views and consent to marry. He was obliged to submit to all that was prescribed, and the hand of the Princess of Brunswick was asked and obtained. But, during the short interval of the negotiation, a celebrated woman who had long aspired to govern the prince, finding the place vacant, took possession of it herself. It is pretended that she has said she had sought this connection for twenty years; for she was much older than himself, a circumstance which seemed to indicate a peculiar taste in this family, having also been remarked in several of his brothers. This person was immediately appointed Lady of the Bed-chamber to the future Princess of Wales; she even went to meet her and bring her to England. It was under such auspices, such malignant influence, that the bride landed on the British shore. Accordingly, it is positively asserted that this unhappy princess had not even so much as twenty-four hours’ enjoyment, out of that privileged period emphatically called by the English the honey-moon. From the very day after her marriage, ridicule, neglect, and contempt were her portion.

"All who possessed the least spark of generosity or morality in England took her part, and loudly exclaimed against the manner in which she was treated. The greater share of the odium, however, fell on Lady Jersey, who was accused of having bewitched the prince. She became the object of public execration; yet the Prince, it was declared could not plead the excuse of illusion or blindness; for it is said that, after a very gay entertainment amongst his jovial companions, one of them was led, in the course of conversation, to say that he knew the Madame de Merteuil of the Liaisons Dangereuses. Many of the others immediately cried out that they also knew one: upon this, it is said, the Prince proposed, for a frolic, that each should write his secret separately. All the notes were thrown into a vase; and the name of Lady Jersey was found written on every one of them: the Prince himself, not having looked for such unanimity, or expected to be discovered, had written this name as well as the rest.

373"I knew this Lady Jersey, and it must be confessed that her face and whole appearance were so little indicative of her age, that it could not easily have been suspected. She had all the charms of early youth, heightened by all the grace of the most elegant manners; and I am bound to say, that, in the circles in which I saw her, she even possessed a sort of attractive kindness; whether the manners of her class render the disposition indulgent, or whether she did not in fact deserve all the reproaches with which she was loaded.

“The Prince of Wales seems to have possessed a peculiar faculty, a gift, which the English call the power of fascination. He is endowed with it in the highest degree; one would think that his will was sufficient to reclaim the attachment of the multitude, and as it were to corrupt public opinion. His history is full of those losses and returns of popularity; and, perhaps, it is the certainty of being able to command this sort of success that has so often led him, as his detractors say, to disregard public opinion. His enemies have asserted that he has carried this species of courage to absolute heroism. They have censured him for his hardihood in persisting, whilst lying himself under the reproach of an irregular life, in accusing his wife of that conduct of which he set the example; an inconsistency which ought, undoubtedly, to be attributed to the fatal suggestions of pernicious counsellors, inimical to his glory and tranquillity. It is at least certain, that the basest corruption, the aid of the laws, and the influence of the heir to the throne, were all employed against the Princess, and all in vain: a circumstance which, it is said, used to torment the Prince and expose him to ridicule. People laughed at his unprecedented ill-luck, in being unable to prove, with all his endeavours, what so many husbands would give so much to conceal. Hatred increased on every new defeat, and with it the sufferings of the victim. She was reduced, at last, to a sort of banishment, to a place a few miles from London; she was deprived of her daughter; she was insulted in the sight of the allied Sovereigns when they visited London. But the expression of the feelings of the multitude was always ready to avenge her, and it 374became necessary to get her to quit England; which she was induced to do voluntarily, by the aid, perhaps, of the perfidious insinuations of some pretended friend.”

Here the Emperor again interrupted me, saying that I was leaving out a very essential point. “When and how had the Prince attained the Royal authority? How had he arranged matters with the opposition? What had he done with those old friends?” “Sire,” I replied, "my information ends here. There was a time when political events induced your Majesty to cut off all intercourse between England and France. We no longer obtained the papers; we were prevented from receiving letters; the two nations had no longer any thing in common. There is, therefore, an actual blank in my intelligence, which I should be unwilling to fill up with mere conjectures. I understand, however, that after several recoveries and relapses of the old King, all parties at length agreed to consign the regency to the Prince of Wales, and place him in full possession of the sovereign authority. The long expected period of changes and of hopes was at length arrived. The gates of heaven were now to open, at length, to that opposition which had so long eulogised the Prince; to those old friends who had seemed from infancy to unite their fate with his. But, to the great and universal surprise of the nation, and through I know not what contrivance of Lord Castlereagh’s, nothing was altered. Those old ministers, who had so long been the objects of the Prince’s dislike and censure, kept their places, and those intimate and dearly beloved friends, who had so long been caressed, remained out of office.

"The opposition complained loudly; but they were laughed at, and told that when the wild Prince of Wales became a great King, his first care was to get rid of his old companions. The jest might be a very good one, but it was by no means applicable; for the greatest characters in the empire were at the head of this opposition; and they were far from being Falstaffs or profligates of that kind. From that instant they evinced a marked coolness towards the Prince: some would no longer see him; others refused his invitations, or repelled the advances 375which he made to them. It is said, however, that one of them suffered himself to be persuaded to go to dine in private with the Prince. The latter, recurring to his usual victorious weapons, endeavoured to prove to him, with his accustomed grace, that he could not have acted differently; and at length desired to be told of what his old friends could justly accuse him. The guest, whose heart was still swelling with indignation, seized the opportunity, and freely told him all his faults, with such warmth, that the Princess Charlotte, who was at table, and was perhaps secretly inclined towards the guest’s opinion, burst into tears. Lord Byron heard of this scene the next day, and consecrated the event in these celebrated verses:—

"Weep, daughter of a royal line,

A Sire’s disgrace, a realm’s decay;

Ah happy! if each tear of thine

Could wash a father’s fault away!

Weep, for thy tears are virtue’s tears,

Auspicious to these suff’ring isles;

And be each drop, in future years,

Repaid thee by thy people’s smiles."

March, 1812.

“In 1814, at the time of my visit to London, I had the honour of being presented to the Prince of Wales at Carlton House.”—“And what the devil did you want there?” said the Emperor. “I do not wonder that your Majesty is surprised; but I was induced by a sort of point of honour: I thought I could do no other. There were many French in London at that time; I was the only one who had been near your Majesty’s person, worn your colours, and followed the line of conduct which seemed to be censured at that period. Some one having told me that the others would certainly not endure my presence, that circumstance determined me to go. We were, in fact, twenty-two Frenchmen, presented at the same time, at one of the Prince’s grand levees; and I must say that I never saw more graceful manners, more pleasing expression, more harmony in the tout-ensemble; I thought him the beau-ideal of elegance. I comprehended the full power, the whole truth of that magic 376fascination which I had so often heard attributed to him; and even at this moment, Sire, when I recollect that fine countenance, on which I thought I perceived elevation of mind, and the love and desire of glory, I cannot help asking myself how your Majesty comes to be here, how those atrocious ministers could induce him to declare himself the gaoler, the...?” “My dear Sir,” said the Emperor, “perhaps you were no physiognomist; you took the halo of coquetry for that of greatness; the study to please for the love of glory; and, besides, the love of glory is not exactly in the face; it is in the recesses of the heart, and you did not search there.^[27]

“But were you not translating to me, the other day,” said the Emperor, "some journal or work, in which it was stated that the Prince Regent had made a great display of sympathy towards the last Stuarts; that he had paid the most extravagant prices for things which had belonged to, and been left by them; that he had talked of raising a monument to the last of them? There is much more calculation than magnanimity in all that; it is because he is anxious to establish and consecrate their extinction. From that event his legitimacy and security date; and he is in the right. If, in my time, and under the circumstances into which the English Ministers had plunged the nation, there had been some young Stuart, of a brave and enterprising character, equal to the present age, he would have been landed in Ireland, escorted by the modern doctrines; and then we should undoubtedly have seen the regenerate Stuarts driving out the degenerate Brunswicks. England would have had its 20th of March. Such are thrones and their contagious influence; scarcely is one seated there when the poison begins to operate. These 377Brunswicks, brought in by liberal ideas, raised by the will of the people, have no sooner ascended the throne, than they grasp at arbitrary and despotic power; they must absolutely drive their wheels in the track which overturned their predecessors; and this because they are become Kings! And it should seem that this is the inevitable course! That fine stem of the Nassaus, for instance, those patrons of noble independence in Europe, whose liberalism ought to be in the blood, and even in the marrow of their bones; those Nassaus, who, as far as regards their dominions, would be only at the tail, and who might by their doctrines, place themselves at the head,—they have just been placed on a throne; well, you will infallibly see them concern themselves about nothing but becoming what they call legitimates; and adopt the principles, the proceedings, and the errors of that class.

“Nay, after all, my dear Sir, has not the same thing been said of me, myself? and perhaps not without some appearance of reason; for probably many circumstances may have escaped my observation. Nevertheless I declared, on a solemn occasion, that in my estimation the sovereign power was not in the title, nor the throne in its splendour. It has been said of me, that scarcely had I attained power, when I exercised a despotic and arbitrary sway; but it was rather a Dictatorship; and the circumstances of the times will be a sufficient excuse for me. I have also been reproached with having suffered myself to be intoxicated with pride at my alliance with the house of Austria, and having thought myself more truly a sovereign after my marriage; in fact, of having considered myself from that time as Alexander, become the son of a god! But can all this be just? Did I really fall into such errors? A young, handsome, agreeable, woman fell to my lot; was it inadmissible for me to testify some satisfaction? Could I not devote a few moments to her without incurring blame? Was I not to be allowed to abandon myself to a few hours of happiness? Was I required to use my wife ill from the very first night, like your Prince ——? Or was I, like the Sultan we have read of, to have her head struck 378off, in order to escape the reproaches of the multitude? No! my only fault in that alliance was that of carrying too plebeian a heart with me. How often have I said that the heart of a statesman ought only to be in his head. Mine, unfortunately, in this instance, remained in its place, subject to family feelings, and this marriage ruined me; because I believed, above all things, in the religion, the piety, the morality, and the honour of Francis I. He has cruelly deceived me. I am willing to believe that he was himself deceived; and I forgive him with all my heart. But will history spare him? If, however,...”

Here Napoleon was silent for a few moments, resting his head on one of his hands; then resuming, “But what a romance is my life!” said he, rising. “Open the door, and let us walk.” And we walked up and down the adjoining rooms, for some time.

MY SON’S FALL FROM HIS HORSE.—PILLAGE IN WAR.—CHARACTER OF THE FRENCH SOLDIER.—PARTICULARS RELATING TO WATERLOO, BY THE NEW ADMIRAL.

Monday July 1st to Thursday 4th.—Yesterday, my son’s horse ran away with him, whilst he was taking a ride; and, being fearful that the horse might dash him against the trees, he thought it best to throw himself off his back. He had sprained his ancle sufficiently to condemn him to the sofa for a month.

The Emperor condescended to come into my room, about 11 o’clock, to learn the state of my son, whom he rated well for his awkwardness. I followed him into the garden, where he breakfasted, which he had not done there for some time previously.

The conversation turned on pillage by armies, and the horrors occasioned by it.

Pavia, the Emperor said, was the only place that he had ever given up to pillage; he had promised it to his soldiers for 24 hours; “but after three hours,” said he, “I could bear it no longer, and I put an end to it. I had but 1200 men;” said he, “the cries of the populace which reached my ears prevailed. If there had been 20,000 soldiers, their numbers would have drowned the 379complaints of the people, and I should have heard nothing of it. Happily, however, policy and morality are equally opposed to the system of pillage. I have meditated much on this subject: and have often been urged to gratify my soldiers in this manner. But nothing is so certain to disorganize and completely ruin an army. A soldier loses all discipline as soon as he gets an opportunity to pillage; and, if by pillage he enriches himself, he immediately becomes a bad soldier, and will not fight. Besides,” continued he, “pillage is incompatible with our French manners; the hearts of our soldiers are not bad; when the first transport of fury is over, they come to themselves again. It would be impossible for French soldiers to pillage for twenty-four hours; many of them would employ the latter part of the time in repairing the mischief they had done in the beginning. They afterwards reproach each other, in their quarters, with the excesses they have committed, and load with reprobation and contempt those whose conduct has been particularly odious.”

About three o’clock, the new Admiral, Sir Pulteney Malcolm, and all his officers, were presented to the Emperor. The Admiral first conversed with the Emperor alone, for nearly two hours. He must have been much impressed with this conversation, for he said, as he came out, that he had been taking a very fine and valuable lesson on the history of France.

The Emperor was understood to have said to him, towards the close of the interview, what I believe I have already introduced elsewhere on this subject. “You have levied a contribution of 700 millions on France; I have imposed one of more than 10,000 millions on your country. You raised yours by your bayonets: I caused mine to be raised by your parliament.” “And that is the true summary of the matter,” replied the Admiral.

The Admiral was bringing from America some old troops consisting of 12,000 men, without the least suspicion of the new state of Europe. At sea, a vessel informed him of the return of the Emperor from the isle of Elba, and the consequent revolution; it seemed to him 380so magical that he could scarcely believe it. But when he arrived in sight of Plymouth, he received orders to proceed, with all possible expedition, to Ostend; he reached it in time, and 4000 of the men on board his ships were enabled to take part in the battle, and they were unquestionably amongst the best troops in the whole line, as the Admiral declared. Who can determine what degree of influence they may have had? The English thought the battle lost, during the whole day, and they acknowledge that it would have been so, but for Grouchy’s error.

ANECDOTES ON THE 18TH BRUMAIRE.—SIEYES.—GRAND

ELECTOR.—CAMBACERES.—LEBRUN, &C.

After walking some time in the garden, the Emperor got into his calash. The weather was delightful: we made two turns at full gallop. I was alone with him. He spoke much of my son, and his future prospects, with a degree of interest and kindness which went to my heart. He said that, considering his age, the circumstance of being sent to St. Helena was of inestimable value to his future life; that it must be like a hot-house for bringing forward his character.

After dinner, the Emperor resumed the subject of the 18th Brumaire, and related it to us with an infinite number of minor details. As he has long since dictated it to General Gourgaud, I shall refer to his publication for the mass of the particulars of that event. I shall only give here some little anecdotes or accessories which possibly may not be found there.

Napoleon’s situation on his return from Egypt was unprecedented. He had found himself immediately applied to by all parties, and had been entrusted with all their secrets. There were three which were particularly distinct; the Manege, of which General J. was one of the leaders; the Moderates, directed by Sieyes; and the Rotten party, with Barras at their head.

The determination which Napoleon formed to ally himself with the Moderates, exposed him, he said, to great danger. With the Jacobins he would have risked nothing; they offered to name him Dictator. “But, 381after conquering with them,” observed the Emperor, “it would have been necessary, almost immediately, to conquer against them. A club cannot endure a permanent chief; it wants one for every successive passion. Now to make use of a party one day, in order to attack it the next, under whatever pretext it is done, is still a piece of treachery; it was inconsistent with my principles.”

“My dear Sir,” said the Emperor to me, at another moment, after having again run over the events of the 18th of Brumaire, "that is a far different thing, you will allow, from the conspiracy of St. Real, in which there is much more plotting, and much less result; ours was struck at a single blow. It is certain that there never was a great revolution which caused less inconvenience; it was so generally desired; it was accordingly crowned with universal applause.

"For my own part, all my share in the plot, for effecting this change, was confined to the assembling the whole crowd of my visitors at the same hour in the morning, and marching at their head to seize on power. It was from the threshold of my door, from the top of my own steps, and without my friends having any previous knowledge of my intentions, that I led them to this conquest; it was amidst the brilliant escort they formed, their lively joy, and unanimous ardour, that I presented myself at the bar of the ancients, to thank them for the Dictatorship with which they invested me.

“Metaphysicians have disputed, and will long dispute, whether we did not violate the laws, and whether we were not criminal; but these are mere abstractions, at best fit for books and tribunes, and which ought to disappear before imperative necessity: one might as well blame a sailor for waste and destruction, when he cuts away his masts to avoid being upset. The fact is that, had it not been for us the country must have been lost: and we saved it. The authors and chief agents of that memorable state transaction may and ought, instead of attempting denials or justifications, to answer their accusers proudly, like the Roman, We protest that we have saved our country; come with us and return thanks to the gods.”

382On the completion of the Revolution of the 18th Brumaire, three provisional consuls were appointed; Napoleon, Sieyes, and Ducos. A president was to be chosen, the moment was critical, and rendered the General highly necessary; he accordingly seized the arm-chair, and his two acolytes did not venture to dispute it with him. Besides, Ducos declared himself that moment, once for all. The General alone could save them, he said: and thenceforth he was of his opinion in every thing. Sieyes was greatly mortified, but he was obliged to do the same.

Sieyes was a man of a very selfish disposition. On the first meeting of the three Consuls in Council, and as soon as they were alone, Sieyes went in a mysterious manner to the doors of the apartment, to see whether any person was within hearing; then, returning to Napoleon, he said to him with complacency, and in an under-tone, shewing him, at the same time, a sort of cabinet. “Do you see that pretty piece of furniture? You do not, perhaps, suspect how valuable it is?” Napoleon thought he was directing his attention to some appendage of the crown, which had, perhaps, been used by Louis XVI. “That“That is not the matter;" said Sieyes, seeing his mistake, “I am going to let you into the secret; it contains 800,000 francs!” and his eyes opened wide. “In our Directorial magistracy, we reflected that a Director going out of office might very possibly go back to his family without a denier; a very unbecoming thing: we therefore invented this little chest from which we drew a sum for every Director going out of office. There are now no more Directors; we are therefore the possessors of the remainder. What shall we do with it?” Napoleon, who had paid great attention, and began, at length, to understand, said: “If it comes to my knowledge, the sum shall go to the public treasury; but if I should not hear of it (and I know nothing of it yet), you and Ducos, being two old Directors, can divide it between you: only make haste, for to-morrow it may perhaps, be too late. The colleagues did not wait to be told twice,” observed the Emperor. "Sieyes hastily undertook the operation, and divided the spoil like the lion in the fable. He made several lots; he took one as the 383eldest Director; another, because he was to have continued in office longer than his colleague; a third, because he had suggested the idea of this happy change, &c. In short he adjudged 600,000 francs to himself, and only sent 200,000 to poor Ducos, who, when his first emotions had subsided, insisted on revising this calculation, and seemed bent on quarrelling with Sieyes. Both of them reverted to the subject every moment, wishing their third colleague to arbitrate between them; but the latter always replied—Settle it between yourselves. Above all, be quiet, for if the matter should come to my ears, you would have to give up the whole.

“When we were about to fix on a constitution,” said the Emperor, “Sieyes treated us with another very entertaining scene. Circumstances and public opinion had made him a sort of oracle in these matters; he accordingly unfolded his various propositions in the committees of the two councils, with great mystery, importance and method; they were all adopted, good, bad, and indifferent. Finally, he crowned the work by displaying the upshot which had been expected with lively and anxious impatience: he proposed a Grand Elector, who was to reside at Versailles, to enjoy six millions per annum, to represent the national dignity, and to have no other duty than the nomination of two Consuls, one for peace and the other for war; entirely independent in their functions. Moreover, if this Elector should make a bad choice, the Senate was to absorb him himself. This was the technical expression, meaning, to remove him, by replacing him, as a punishment, in the crowd of private citizens.”

Napoleon, for want of experience in assemblies, and also through a degree of circumspection which the circumstances of the moment required, had taken little or no share in what had preceded; but now, at this decisive point, he began, he said, to laugh in Sieyes’s face, and to cut up all his metaphysical nonsense without mercy. Sieyes did not like to defend himself, said the Emperor, nor did he know how to do it. He made the attempt, however, saying that, after all, a king was nothing more. Napoleon replied, “But you take the abuse for the principle, 384the shadow for the body. And how can you imagine, M. Sieyes, that a man of any talent or the least honour, will make up his mind to act the part of a pig fattening on a few millions?” After this sally, which, said the Emperor, made those who were present laugh immoderately, Sieyes remained overwhelmed; it was no longer in his power to resume the subject of his Grand Elector; and a First Consul was determined on, who was to have the supreme decision and the nomination of all offices: with two accessory Consuls, who were to have deliberate voices only. It was in fact, from that moment, a unity of power. The First Consul was precisely the President of America, veiled under the forms which the irritable spirit of the times still rendered necessary. The Emperor accordingly said that his reign began in reality from that day.

The Emperor in some measure regretted that Sieyes had not been nominated one of the consuls. Sieyes, who at first refused the appointment, afterwards regretted it himself, but not until it was too late. “He had fallen into a mistake respecting the nature of these Consuls,” said Napoleon; “he was fearful of mortification, and of having the First Consul to contend with at every step; which would have been the case, if all the Consuls had been equal; we should then have all been enemies: but, the constitution having made them subordinate, there was no room for the struggles of obstinacy, no cause of enmity, but a thousand reasons for a genuine unanimity. Sieyes discovered this, but too late.” The Emperor said he might have been very useful in council—better, perhaps, than the others, because he had occasionally novel and most luminous ideas; but that, in other respects, he was wholly unfit to govern. “After all,” said the Emperor, “in order to govern it is necessary to be a military man; one can only rule in boots and spurs. Sieyes, without being fearful, was always in fear; his police spies disturbed his rest.”

At the Luxembourg, during the provisional consulate, he often awakened his colleague Napoleon, and harassed him about the new plots which he heard of every moment from his private police. “But have they corrupted 385our guard?” Napoleon used to say. “No.” “Then go to bed.—In war, as in love, my dear Sir, we must come to close quarters to conclude matters. It will be time enough to be alarmed when our 600 men are attacked.”

The Emperor said that, for the permanent government, he had chosen, in CambacérèsCambacérès and Lebrun, two distinguished characters; both prudent, moderate, and able, but of completely opposite principles—the one the advocate of abuses, prejudices, old institutions, the revival of honours and distinctions, &c.—the other cold, austere, insensible, contending against all these ideas, yielding to them without illusion, and naturally falling into ideology.

In resuming, he observed that Sieyes might perhaps have contributed to give a different colour, another characteristic, to the imperial administration; but it was observed to him that this variation could not have been otherwise than injurious, for Napoleon’s choice had been much approved of at the time. The men he had selected, it was said, were not liable to be objected to by Europe. They had greatly contributed to conciliate public opinion in France, which ran wholly against Sieyes. His name and the recollections attending it would, in the eyes of many people, have disgraced the acts in which he might have taken part; and there was an anecdote eagerly repeated at the time, which shews all the ill-will that was borne towards him. It was said that, whilst he was talking with the Emperor, at the Tuileries, about Louis XIV. he had suffered the word tyrant to escape him. "M. l’Abbé," the Emperor was said to have replied, “if Louis XVI. had been a tyrant, you would now be saying mass, and I should not be here.” The Emperor smiled at this anecdote, without confirming or denying it. It will hereafter appear that it was false.

FRESH AGGRAVATIONS FROM THE GOVERNOR.—HIS ABSURDITIES.

Saturday 6th to Monday 8th.—I have not mentioned the Governor for some time. We endeavour to keep him as much as possible out of our thoughts; we now scarcely ever adverted to him. His ill-manners, and 386the vexations we endure from him oblige me to notice him to-day: they seem to have increased. He has just withheld from us some letters from Europe, although they came open, and in the most ostensible manner—merely because they had not passed through the hands of the Secretary of State; without considering that a want of formality can easily be rectified in England, but that it is irremediable at a distance of two thousand leagues. If, however, in thus rigorously and literally fulfilling his instructions, he had only had the humanity to let us know that he has received these letters, and from whom they come, he might set our minds at ease with regard to those respecting whose health, or whose attention to ourselves, we suffer so much anxiety: but he has the barbarity to make a mystery of the affair. It is not many days since, the Countess Bertrand having written to town, he had the note seized, and sent it back to her as having been written without his permission. He accompanied this insult with an official letter, by which he prohibited us, for the future, from all written or even verbal communication with the inhabitants, without submitting it to his approbation; and what is particularly absurd and incredible is, that he imposed this restriction on our intercourse with people whom he nevertheless permits us to visit at our own pleasure. He accompanied the publication of the act relating to us with commentaries which spread terror amongst the inhabitants; he complains of the excessive expense of the Emperor’s table, and insists on great reductions.—It had not been understood that General Bonaparte would have so many people about him. Ministers, he told us ingenuously, had never doubted that the permission they had sent us to go away would have induced us to quit the Emperor. All this shuffling produced an exchange of pretty sharp notes. To one of the Governor’s communications, in which he said, that if the restrictions imposed on us seemed too hard, we might relieve ourselves from them by going away, the Emperor himself dictated the following addition to the answer we had already written:—"That, having been honoured by him during his prosperity, we considered it our chief pleasure to serve him, now that he could do nothing for 387us; and if there were persons to whom this conduct was incomprehensible, so much the worse for them."

NEW VEXATIONS.—THE EMPEROR SELDOM STIRS OUT.—TRISTAN.—LA FONTAINE’S FABLES.—THE BELLY RULES THE WORLD.—DIFFICULTY OF JUDGING OF MEN.

Tuesday 9th to Thursday 11th.—The Governor continues to annoy us, and is incessantly aggravating the misery of our situation. He seems resolved to place us in close confinement. He has published a proclamation in the town, ordering that all letters and notes addressed by us to the inhabitants, on any occasion whatever, shall be sent to him within twenty-four hours. He has also forbidden them to visit the Grand Marshal and his wife, who live at the entrance of our enclosure. In the beginning of this blockade of Madame BertrandBertrand, it was so rigorously enforced that some medicines sent hence by the doctor for one of the Grand Marshal’s people, who was dying, could not be delivered; and it was only as an accommodation that the officer at last took upon him to let them pass over the wall.

The Governor, having read in a letter, sent by one of us to Europe, that the writer wanted several articles of clothing, linen, &c., came and told him that he might have most of those articles out of the stores sent by Government for Napoleon: and the individual replying that he preferred purchasing them, being unwilling to incur any obligation, the Governor drily answered that he might pay for them if he had a fancy to do so. To which the other replied, “Excuse me, Sir, I like to choose my shops myself.” In consequence of this, the Governor afterwards sent him word, by the Doctor, that he should complain of him, for having contemptuously refused the gifts of Government. The other instantly replied that he should be much obliged to him; being much happier to give him an opportunity of transmitting refusals than requests, to the ministers he served.

All these petty tricks, the length and interest of our readings, and the continuance of the bad weather, which is dreadful, confine the Emperor more closely than ever 388to the house, and overwhelm him with melancholy: he now never stirs abroad. His amusement is now limited to going occasionally, about five o’clock, to visit Madame de Montholon, who has not yet gone abroad since her lying-in. We all meet there, and the Emperor converses for half an hour, or three-quarters, before he returns to his own apartment.

To-day he met little Tristan, the eldest son of M. de Montholon, who is only seven or eight years old, and runs about all day. The Emperor placed him between his knees, and tried to make him recite some fables, of which the poor child did not understand two words out of ten. The Emperor laughed heartily, blaming the practice of putting La Fontaine into the hands of children who cannot understand him; and began to explain these fables to Tristan; endeavouring to render their meaning more palpable to him; nor could any thing be more curious than the simplicity, justice, and logic of his illustrations.

Whilst he was explaining the fable of the Wolf and the Lamb, it was extremely laughable to hear the poor child say Sire, and your Majesty, and in speaking of the wolf, and to the Emperor, confuse all his expressions; whilst his ideas were probably in still greater confusion.

The Emperor thought this fable had far too much irony in it to be within the comprehension of children. It was likewise defective, he observed, in its principle and its moral; and this was the first time that he had been struck with these defects. It was false that the argument of the stronger was always the best; and if it sometimes happened so, in fact, that, he said, was the very evil, the abuse, which was to be condemned. The wolf, ought, therefore, to have been strangled in devouring the lamb.

Tristan is very idle. He confessed to the Emperor that he did not work every day. “Do you not eat every day?” said the Emperor to him, “Yes, Sire.” “Well, then, you ought to work every day; no one should eat who does not work.” “Oh! if that be the case, I will work every day,” said the child, quickly. “Such is the 389influence of the belly,” said the Emperor, patting that of little Tristan. "It is hunger that makes the world move. Come, my little man, if you are a good boy, we’ll make a page of you." "But I won’t be one," said Tristan, pouting and looking sulky.

Our afternoons were occupied in reading something selected in hopes of enabling us to kill time for an hour or two. At this period we were reading a voyage to Spitzbergen; the shipwreck of the Dutch at Nova Zembla; the Causes celébres, the trial of Calas; those of Martinguerre and the Marchioness of Brinvilliers. The author observed, in some part of the work, that the face often gave a false idea of the character. The Emperor paused, laid down the book, and said, with a look and tone that denoted conviction: “It is most true, and it is also true that no study will enable us to avoid this deception. How many proofs of this kind have I had! For instance, I had a person about me; his countenance undoubtedly.... But after all he had a mischievous eye; I ought to have guessed something from that.” He then went into some particulars of the character of the person in question. They had known each other from infancy, he said; he had long placed his entire confidence in this individual, who had talent and resources; the Emperor even thought that he had been attached and faithful—"But he was much too covetous," said he, “he was too fond of money. When I was dictating to him, and he sometimes had to write millions, it was never without a peculiar change of countenance, a smacking of his lips, and restlessness on his chair, which several times induced me to ask what ailed him.”

The Emperor said this vice was too glaring to allow of his retaining this person about him; but that, considering his other qualities, he ought, perhaps, to have contented himself with removing him into a different situation.

THE IRON MASK, &C.—INGENIOUS FICTION.

Friday, 12th.—The conversation to-day led us to speak of the Iron Mask, and we took a review of what has 390been said on the subject by Voltaire, Dutens, and others; and of what is found respecting him in Richelieu’s Memoirs. In these it is well known that he is said to have been the twin-brother of Louis XIV., and the elder of the two. On this occasion, some one added that, being employed in making out a pedigree, a person had come to him to demonstrate seriously to him that Napoleon was a lineal descendant from this Iron Mask, and consequently the legitimate heir of Louis XIII. and Henry IV., in preference to Louis XIV. and all his issue. The Emperor also said that he had heard something about it, and added that the credulity of mankind and their love of the marvellous are so great that it would not have been difficult to make out and substantiate something of the kind for the multitude, and that there would not have been wanting certain persons in the Senate to sanction it; probably, he observed, the very men who at a later period were so eager to revile him, as soon as they saw him in adversity.

We then went on to trace the foundation and the progress of this story. The name of the Governor of the Island of St. Marguerite, to whom the custody of the Iron Mask was entrusted, was M. de Bonpart, a circumstance, to begin with, very singular. This man, it was asserted, was aware of the origin of his prisoner. He had a daughter: she and the prisoner were both young; they saw each other and loved. The Governor, having informed the Court of this circumstance, it was decided that there was no great objection to allowing the unfortunate captive to seek in love an alleviation of his misery, and they were married.

The person who was speaking at this moment said that, at the time the above particulars were related to him, he had been very much entertained by them, and had happened to say that he thought the story very ingeniously imagined; upon which the narrator of it became excessively angry, maintaining that the marriage could very easily be verified by the registers of one of the parishes of Marseilles, which he named. He added that the children born of this marriage were silently and secretly conveyed to Corsica, where the difference of 391language, chance, or perhaps intention had, changed the name of Bonpart into Bonaparte and Buonaparte, which, after all, has the same meaning, and is in fact the same thing.

After this anecdote, it was added that, at the time of the revolution, a similar story had been made in favour of the Orleans branch. It was founded in a document found in the Bastille, and surmised that Anne of Austria, who was brought to bed after twenty-three years of sterility, had been delivered of a girl, and that Louis XIII. fearing she might have no more children, had been induced to put away that girl and falsely to substitute in her stead a boy, which was Louis XIV.; that the following year, however, the Queen had been again brought to bed, and this time really of a boy, which boy was Philip, the head of the house of Orleans, who thus turned out to be with his descendants the legitimate heirs to the throne, whilst Louis XIV. and his issue were only intruders and usurpers. According to that story the Iron Mask was a girl. A pamphlet on this subject was circulated in the provinces at the time the Bastille was taken, but the story did not gain credit, and very quietly disappeared, without having, it seems, engaged the attention of the capital even for a moment.

JUNOT, HIS WIFE, &C.

Saturday, 13th.—The conversation again fell upon Junot. Of the considerable fortunes which the Emperor had bestowed, that of Junot, he said, was one of the most extravagant. The sums he had given him almost exceeded belief, and yet he was always in debt; he had squandered treasures, without credit to himself, without discernment or taste, and, too frequently, the Emperor added, in gross debauchery.

He has been known more than once, after having taken a most copious and substantial breakfast, in his magnificent hotel at Paris, fired with anger at the most trifling demand made by the most insignificant creditor, to threaten to pay the debt with his sword. Every time he saw the Emperor, said Napoleon, it was to hint at some fresh 392embarrassment, be reprimanded and assisted. In the campaign of Austerlitz, he came to the Emperor at Schönbrun; but this time, said Napoleon, it was not to intercede precisely for himself. He took at this period a most lively interest in the beautiful Madame Recamier. He had just arrived from Paris, and began his conversation with the Emperor by a most virulent philippic against M. de Marbois, then Minister of the Treasury, who had been base enough, he said, to refuse M. Recamier a loan of only two millions, to save him from bankruptcy. All Paris was indignant. This Marbois, he added, was a wicked man, an unworthy servant, who did not love the Emperor. He, Junot, had gone to him and had used every endeavour to persuade him, but to no purpose. He had represented to him the enormity of his conduct, and had assured him (and such added Junot was the general opinion in Paris,) that if the Emperor had been in the capital he would have immediately ordered the money to be given to M. Recamier. “He was on a wrong scent,” said the Emperor, "for I coolly replied to this passionate lover who was almost out of his senses: ‘You and Paris are both mistaken, I should not have ordered even two thousand sous to be given; and I should have been very much displeased with De Marbois if he had acted otherwise than he has done. I am not Madame Recamier’s lover, and I do not come forward to the assistance of merchants who keep up an establishment of six hundred thousands francs per annum. Know that, M. Junot, and learn also that the Treasury does not lend money to those whom it knows to have been long since on the road to bankruptcy; it has other claims to satisfy.’ Junot," added the Emperor, “was obliged to calm his emotion, thinking probably that there were hard-hearted people at Vienna as well as at Paris.”

Junot travelled as fast as the Emperor himself; he had his relays, said Napoleon, hundreds of horses, and other extravagances of the kind.

The Emperor added that, not so much in his capacity as sovereign, but as being fond of Junot, and actuated also by a sort of feeling derived from the similarity of 393birth-place, he being also originally from Corsica, he had one day sent for Madame Junot, in order to give her some paternal admonitions on the subject of the extravagance of her husband’s expenditure, the profusion of diamonds which she herself had inconsiderately displayed after her return from Portugal, and her intimate connections with a certain foreigner, which might give umbrage in a political point of view. But she rejected this advice, dictated alone by concern for her interest. “She grew angry,” said the Emperor, “and treated me like a child; nothing then remained for me to do but to send her about her business, and abandon her to her fate. She fancied herself a princess of the family of the Comnenes; and Junot had been made to believe it when he was induced to marry her. Her family was from Corsica, and resided in the neighbourhood of mine; they were under great obligations to my mother, not merely for her benevolence towards them, but for services of a more positive nature.” The Emperor then gave the following explanation:

"The Genoese, in evacuating the Morea, had formerly carried a colony of Maniotes to Corsica and settled them in the neighbourhood of Ajaccio. M. de Vergennes, while he was ambassador at Constantinople, married a Greek woman; and, on his return to France, being greatly in favour with Louis XVI. he took it into his head that he must have married a princess. It so happened that some political circumstances occurred to favour his wish; the downfall of Constantinople was believed in at that moment, and it would have suited France to advance some pretensions to a portion of that empire. A man of the name of Comnene, a relation of Madame de Vergennes, was therefore sent for from the Greek colony near Ajaccio, and, having been brought to Versailles, was soon after, by virtue of letters-patent of Louis XVI., acknowledged a descendant from the Emperors of Constantinople. This said Comnene was a large farmer, whose sister had unexpectedly married, some years before, a Frenchman, a clerk in the victualling department named P—. After the elevation of the family, and through the interest of M, de Vergennes, this P—, 394clerk in the victualling department, had become a man of great consequence, having had the contract for supplying the whole army of Rochambeau. The daughter of the clerk was this very Madame Junot, duchess of Abrantes.

“Junot, in the campaign of Russia, gave me great cause of dissatisfaction;” said the Emperor, “he was no longer the same man, and committed some gross blunders which cost us dear.”

After the return from Moscow, Junot, in consequence of the dissatisfaction he had given, lost the governorship of Paris; and the Emperor sent him to Venice. However that species of disgrace was almost immediately softened, by his appointment as Governor-general of Illyria; but the blow was struck. The frequent incoherences which had been observed in Junot’s behaviour for some time past, and which had arisen from the excesses in which he had indulged, broke out at last into complete insanity. It was necessary to secure him, and to convey him home to his paternal mansion, where he died miserably shortly afterwards, having mutilated his person with his own hands. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

MARSHAL LANNES.—MURAT AND HIS WIFE, &C.

Sunday, 14th.—During the dinner, speaking of dress, it was said that, amongst the number of great personages of that time, none had carried extravagance in that point further than Murat, and yet, some one observed, his dress was for the most part so singular and fantastic that the public called him King Franconi.^[28]

The Emperor laughed very heartily, and confessed that certain costumes and manners sometimes gave to Murat the appearance of a quack operator or a mountebank. It was added that Bernadotte also took infinite pains with his dress, and that Lannes bestowed much time upon his. The Emperor expressed himself much surprised at what he had heard respecting the two latter, and this led him to repeat how sincerely he regretted the loss of Marshal Lannes. “Poor Lannes,” said he, "had passed the night 395which preceded the battle, in Vienna, and not alone. He appeared on the field without having taken any food, and fought the whole day. The physician said that this triple concurrence of circumstances caused his death, he required a great deal of strength after the wound to enable him to bear it, and unfortunately nature was almost exhausted before.

“It is generally said,” the Emperor observed, “that there are certain wounds, to which death seems preferable; but this is very seldom the case, I assure you. It is at the moment we are going to part with existence that we cling to it with all our might. Lannes, the most courageous of men, deprived of both his legs, would not hear of death, and was irritated to such a degree as to declare that the two surgeons who attended him deserved to be hanged for behaving so brutally towards a Marshal. He had unfortunately overheard them whisper to each other, as they thought without being heard, that it was impossible he could recover. Every moment the unfortunate Lannes called for the Emperor; he twined himself round me,” said Napoleon, “with all he had left of life; he would hear of no one but me, he thought but of me; it was a kind of instinct! Undoubtedly he loved his wife and children better than me; yet he did not speak of them: it was he that protected them, whilst I on the contrary was his protector. I was for him something vague and undefined, a superior being, his Providence, which he implored!”

Somebody then observed that the world had spoken very differently on the subject; that it had been reported that Lannes had died like a maniac, vociferating imprecations against the Emperor, at whom he seemed enraged; and it was added that he had always an aversion to the Emperor, and had often manifested it to him with insolence. “What an absurdity,” said the Emperor, “Lannes, on the contrary, adored me. He was assuredly one of the men on whom I could most implicitly rely. It is very true that, in the impetuosity of his disposition, he has sometimes suffered some hasty expressions against me to escape his lips, but he would probably have broken 396the head of any person who had chanced to hear them.”

Returning to Murat, some one observed that he had greatly influenced the unfortunate events of 1814. “He determined them,” said the Emperor, “he is one of the principal causes of our being here. But the fault is originally mine. There were several men whom I had made too great; I had raised them above the sphere of their intelligence. I was reading, some days since, his proclamation on abandoning the Viceroy, which I had not seen before. It is difficult to conceive any thing disgraced by a greater degree of turpitude: he says in that document that the moment is come to choose between two banners, that of crime and that of virtue. It is my banner which he calls the banner of crime! and it is Murat, my creature, the husband of my sister, the man who owed every thing to me, who would have been nothing without me, who exists by me, and is known through me alone—it is Murat who writes this! It is impossible to desert the cause of misfortune with more unfeeling brutality; and to run with more unblushing baseness to hail a new destiny.”

From that moment, Madame (mother of the Emperor) refused to have any thing more to do with either Murat or his wife; to all their entreaties she invariably answered that she held traitors and treachery in abhorrence. As soon as she was at Rome, after the disasters of 1814, Murat hastened to send her eight magnificent horses out of his stables at Naples; but Madame would not accept them. She resisted, in like manner, every effort of her daughter Caroline, who constantly repeated that, after all, the fault was not hers; that she had no share in it; that she could not command her husband. But Madame answered, like Clytemnestra—"If you could not command him, you ought at least to have opposed him:—but what struggles have you made? what blood has flowed? At the expense of your own life, you ought to have defended your brother, your benefactor, your master, against the sanguinary attempts of your husband.

397“On my return from Elba,” said the Emperor, "Murat’s head was turned, on hearing that I had landed in France. The first intelligence he received of this event informed him that I was at Lyons. He was accustomed to my great returns of fortune; he had more than once seen me placed in most extraordinary circumstances. On this occasion, he thought me already master of all Europe, and determined to endeavour to wrest Italy from me; for that was his object, the aim of all his hopes. It was in vain that some men, of the greatest influence amongst the nations which he attempted to excite to rebellion, threw themselves at his feet and assured him that he was mistaken; that the Italians had a king on whom alone they had bestowed their love and their esteem. Nothing could stop him; he ruined himself, and contributed to ruin us a second time; for Austria, supposing that he was acting at my instigation, would not believe my professions, and mistrusted me. Murat’s unfortunate end corresponds with his conduct. Murat was endowed with extraordinary courage and little intelligence. The too great disproportion between those two qualities explains the man entirely. It was difficult, even impossible, to be more courageous than Murat and Lannes; but Murat had remained courageous and nothing more. The mind of Lannes, on the contrary, had risen to the level of his courage; he had become a giant. HoweverHowever," said the Emperor, in ending the conversation, “the execution of Murat is nevertheless horrible. It is an event in the history of the morals of Europe; an infraction of the rules of public decorum.—A king has caused another king, acknowledged by all the others, to be shot! What a spell he has broken!” . . . . . . . . .

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