Читать книгу The Life, Exile and Conversations with Napoleon - Emmanuel-Auguste-Dieudonné Las Cases - Страница 100

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10th.—The Emperor now begins to make rapid advancement in English; and, with the assistance of his dictionary, might manage tolerably without me. He was delighted with the decided progress he had made. His lesson for to-day was the task of reading in the Encyclopedia Britannica the article on the Nile, of which he now and then made memorandums to assist him in his dictations to the Grand Marshal. In this article the Emperor found a fact related which I had formerly mentioned to him, but which he had hitherto considered as an absurd story. The great Albuquerque proposed to the King of Portugal to turn the course of the Nile previous to its entrance into the valley of Egypt, so as to make it fall into the Red Sea, which would have rendered Egypt an impassable desert, and made the Cape of Good Hope the only channel for the great trade of India. Bruce thinks the execution of this gigantic idea not entirely impossible; the Emperor was forcibly struck with it.

About five o’clock the Emperor took an airing in the calash; the drive was extremely pleasant, and the circumstance of some trees having been cut down has, by forming several circuitous roads, made our original space three times as large as before. On our return, we took advantage of the fineness of the evening to walk for a long time in the garden: the conversation was most interesting. It turned on various important subjects, viz. on the variety of religions; on the spirit that had given them birth; the ridiculous absurdities with which they were mingled; the excesses by which they had been degraded; the objections that had been urged against them, &c. The Emperor treated all these subjects with his usual superiority.