Читать книгу The Life, Exile and Conversations with Napoleon - Emmanuel-Auguste-Dieudonné Las Cases - Страница 50

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23rd–24th. The English Ministers, in violating the rights of hospitality, to which we had trusted with such implicit confidence, seem to have omitted nothing adapted to make us feel this violation the more bitterly. By banishing us to the farthest extremity of the world, and reducing us to every kind of privation and ill-treatment, they wish to make us drain the cup of misery to the very dregs. St. Helena is a true Siberia: the only difference is its limited extent, and the climate being warm instead of cold.

The Emperor Napoleon, who but lately possessed such boundless power, and disposed of so many Crowns, now occupies a wretched hovel, a few feet square, perched upon a rock, unprovided with furniture, and without either shutters or curtains to the windows. This place must serve him for bed-chamber, dressing-room, dining-room, study, and sitting-room; and he is obliged to go out when it is necessary to have this one apartment cleaned. His meals, consisting of a few wretched dishes, are brought to him from a distance, as though he were a criminal in a dungeon. He is absolutely in want of the necessaries of life: the bread and wine are not such as we have been accustomed to, and are so bad that we loathe to touch them; water, coffee, butter, oil, and other articles, are either not to be procured, or are scarcely fit for use: a bath, which is so necessary to the Emperor’s health, is not to be had; and he is deprived of the exercise of riding on horseback.

His friends and servants are two miles distant from him, and are not suffered to approach his person without being accompanied by a soldier. They are deprived of their arms, and are compelled to pass the night at the guard-house, if they return beyond a certain hour, or if any mistake occur in the pass-word, which happens almost daily. Thus, on the summit of this frightful rock, we are equally exposed to the severity of man and the rigour of nature! And how easy would it have been to procure us a more suitable retreat and more courteous usage. Assuredly, if the Sovereigns of Europe decreed this exile, private enmity has directed its execution. If policy alone dictated this measure as indispensable, would it not have been essential, in order to render the fact evident to the world, to have surrounded with every kind of respect and consideration the illustrious victim, with regard to whom it had been found necessary to violate law and principle?

We were all assembled round the Emperor; and he was recapitulating these facts with warmth: “For what infamous treatment are we reserved!” he exclaimed. “This is the anguish of death! To injustice and violence, they now add insult and protracted torment. If I were so hateful to them, why did they not get rid of me? A few musquet balls in my heart or my head would have done the business; and there would at least have been some energy in the crime! Were it not for you, and, above all, for your wives, I would receive from them nothing but the pay of a private soldier. How can the monarchs of Europe permit the sacred character of sovereignty to be violated in my person? Do they not see that they are, with their own hands, working their own destruction at St. Helena? I entered their capitals victorious, and had I cherished such sentiments, what would have become of them? They styled me their brother; and I had become so by the choice of the people, the sanction of victory, the character of religion, and the alliances of their policy and their blood. Do they imagine that the good sense of nations is blind to their conduct? and what do they expect from it? At all events, make your complaints, gentlemen; let indignant Europe hear them! Complaints from me would be beneath my dignity and character; I must command, or be silent.”

Next morning an officer, opening the door, introduced himself, without farther ceremony, into the Emperor’s room, where I was engaged with him. He had come, however, with good intentions. He was the captain of one of the small vessels which had formed our squadron. He was now about to return to Europe, and came to enquire whether the Emperor had any commands. Napoleon immediately recurred to the subject of our conversation on the preceding evening, and, becoming animated by degrees, gave utterance to sentiments of the loftiest and most energetic character, which he charged him to communicate to the British Government. I interpreted what he said in the same spirit and with great rapidity. The officer seemed astonished at what he heard, and left us with a promise punctually to fulfil his commission. But he could not have described the expression, and particularly the tone, of which I was a witness.—The Emperor, however, directed me to make a memorandum of what he had said, which the officer must have found very feebly expressed compared with what he had just heard. The note was as follows:

Memorandum.—“The Emperor desires, by the return of the next vessel, to receive some account of his wife and son, and to be informed whether the latter is still living. He takes this opportunity of repeating and conveying to the British Government the protestations which he has already made against the extraordinary measures adopted towards him.

“1st. That Government has declared him a prisoner of war. The Emperor is not a prisoner of war. His letter to the Prince Regent, which he wrote and communicated to Captain Maitland, before he went on board the Bellerophon, sufficiently proves, to the whole world, the resolutions and the sentiments of confidence which induced him freely to place himself under the English flag.

“The Emperor might, had he pleased, have agreed to quit France only on stipulated conditions with regard to himself; but he disdained to mingle personal considerations with the great interests with which his mind was constantly occupied. He might have placed himself at the disposal of the Emperor Alexander, who had been his friend, or of the Emperor Francis, who was his father-in-law. But, confiding in the justice of the English nation, he desired no other protection than its laws afforded; and, renouncing public affairs, he sought no other country than that which was governed by fixed laws, independent of private will.

“2nd. Had the Emperor really been a prisoner of war, the rights which civilized governments possess over such a prisoner are limited by the law of nations, and terminate with the war itself.

“3rd. If the English Government considered the Emperor, though arbitrarily, as a prisoner of war, the right of that government was then limited by public law, or else, as there existed no cartel between the two nations during the war, it might have adopted towards him the principles of savages, who put their prisoners to death. This proceeding would have been more humane, and more conformable to justice, than that of sending him to this horrible rock; death inflicted on board the Bellerophon, in the Plymouth roads, would have been a blessing compared with the treatment to which he is now subjected.

“We have travelled over the most desolate countries of Europe, but none is to be compared to this barren rock. Deprived of every thing that can render life supportable, it is calculated only to renew perpetually the anguish of death. The first principles of Christian morality, and that great duty imposed on man to pursue his fate, whatever it may be, may withhold him from terminating with his own hand a wretched existence; the Emperor glories in being superior to such a feeling. But if the British Ministry should persist in their course of injustice and violence towards him, he would consider it a happiness if they would put him to death.”

The vessel which sailed for Europe, with this document, was the Redpole, Captain Desmond.

The reader must pardon the insipid monotony of our complaints: they will be found to be always the same, no doubt; but let it be remembered how much more pain must have been felt in repeating them than can possibly be experienced in their perusal.

MODE OF LIVING AT BRIARS.—CABINET WHICH THE EMPEROR HAD WITH HIM AT AUSTERLITZ.—THE EMPEROR’S LARGE CABINET.—ITS CONTENTS.—ARTICLES OF VIRTÙ, LIBELS AGAINST NAPOLEON, &C., LEFT AT THE TUILERIES BY THE KING.

25th—27th. The Emperor dressed very early; he took a short walk out of doors; we breakfasted about ten o’clock; he walked again, and then we proceeded to business. I read to him what he had dictated on the preceding evening, and which my son had copied in the morning; he corrected it, and then continued his dictation. We went out again about five o’clock, and returned at six, the hour appointed for dinner, that is to say, if the dinner should be brought from the town by that time. The days were very long, and the evenings still longer. Unfortunately I did not understand chess; at one time I had an idea of studying it by night, but where could I find a teacher? I pretended to a little knowledge of piquet, but the Emperor soon discovered my ignorance: he gave me credit for my good intentions, yet he gave up playing. Want of occupation would sometimes lead him to the neighbouring house, where the young ladies made him play at whist. But his more usual practice was to remain at table after dinner, and to converse sitting in his chair; for the room was too small to admit of his walking about.

One evening he ordered a little travelling cabinet to be brought to him, and, after minutely examining every part of it, he presented it to me, saying, “I have had it in my possession a long time, I made use of it on the morning of the battle of Austerlitz. It must go to young Emanuel,” said he, turning to my son; “when he is thirty or forty years old, we shall be no more. This will but enhance the value of the gift; he will say when he shews it, the Emperor Napoleon gave this to my father at St. Helena.” I received the precious gift with a kind of reverential feeling, and I preserve it as a valuable relic.

Passing from that to the examining of a large cabinet, he looked over some portraits of his own family, and some presents which he had personally received. These consisted of the portraits of Madame, of the Queen of Naples, of the daughters of Joseph, of his brothers, of the King of Rome, &c.; an Augustus and a Livia, both exceedingly rare; a Continence of Scipio and another antique of immense value given to him by the Pope; a Peter the Great, on a box; another box with a Charles V.; another with a Turenne; and some, which were in daily use, covered with a collection of medallions of Cæsar, Alexander, Sylla, Mithridates, &c. Next came some snuff-boxes, ornamented with his own portrait set in diamonds. He then looked for one without diamonds, and not finding it, he called his valet-de-chambre to enquire about it: unfortunately this portrait still remained in the town along with the greater part of his effects; I felt mortified at receiving this intelligence, I could not help thinking that I had been a loser by this mischance.

The Emperor then examined several snuff-boxes which Louis XVIII. had left on his table at the Tuileries at the time of his precipitate departure. On one of these were represented, on a black ground, the portraits of Louis XVI., of the Queen, and of Madame Elizabeth, executed in paste in imitation of ivory, and fantastically arranged. They formed three crescents placed back to back in the shape of an equilateral triangle, and groups of cherubs closely interwoven composed the external border. Another box presented a water-colour sketch of a hunt, which had no other claim to merit than the circumstance of its being attributed to the pencil of the Duchess of Angoulême. A third was surmounted with a portrait, which appeared to be that of the Countess of Provence. These three boxes were of simple and even ordinary execution; and could possess no other value than that which their history attaches to them.

On the Emperor’s arrival in Paris on the evening of the 20th of March, he found the King’s study precisely in the state in which it had been used; all his papers still remained on the tables. By the Emperor’s desire, these tables were pushed into the corners of the apartment, and others brought. He gave orders that nothing should be touched, intending to examine the papers at his leisure: and as the Emperor himself quitted France without returning to the Tuileries, the King must have found his study and his papers nearly as he had left them.

The Emperor took a hasty glance at some of the papers. He found among them several letters from the King to M. d’Avary at Madeira, where the latter died; they were written in the King’s own hand, and had doubtless been sent back to him. He found also some confidential letters of the King’s, likewise in his own hand. But how came they there? How had they been returned to him? That would be difficult to explain. They consisted of five or six pages, written in very elegant language, and displaying some sense; but very abstract and metaphysical. In one of them, the Prince said to the lady whom he addressed:—“Judge, Madam, how much I love you; I have left off mourning for your sake.” “And here,” said the Emperor, “the idea of the mourning was followed up by a succession of long paragraphs, quite in an academic style.” The Emperor could not imagine to whom it had been written, or what the mourning alluded to; I could not assist his conjectures on either of these points.

Two or three days after the Emperor had replaced a certain individual at the head of a celebrated institution, he found on one of the tables a memoir from that very person, which, from the terms in which it was couched with reference to himself and the whole of his family, would certainly have prevented him from signing the re-appointment.

There were also many other documents of the same nature: but the most complete records of baseness, deceit, and villany, were found in the apartments of M. Blacas, grand-master of the wardrobe, and minister of the household: these were filled with plans, reports, and petitions of every kind. There were few of these papers in which the writers did not put themselves forward at the expense of Napoleon, whom they were far from expecting to return. They formed altogether such a mass that the Emperor was obliged to appoint a committee of four persons to examine them; he now thinks he was to blame in not having confided that office to a single individual, and with such injunctions that he might have felt confident nothing was suffered to escape. He has since had reason to believe that these papers might have afforded some salutary hints respecting the treachery which surrounded him on his return from Waterloo.

Among the rest there was a long letter from one of the female attendants of the Princess Pauline. This voluminous letter was expressed in very coarse language with regard to the princess and her sisters; and described the Emperor, to whom the writer always alluded under the title of that man, in the worst possible colours. This had not been thought sufficient; part of it had been erased and interlined by another hand, in order to bring forward Napoleon in the most scandalous manner; and on the margin, in the hand of the interlineator, were written the words fit to be printed. A few days more, and this libel would probably have been published.

An upstart woman, who held a distinguished rank in the state, and who had been overwhelmed with acts of kindness from the Emperor, wrote in a great hurry to her friend, another upstart, to acquaint her with the famous decision of the Senate respecting the forfeiture and proscription of Napoleon. The letter contained the following: “My dear friend, my husband has just returned: he is tired to death; but his efforts have carried it; we are delivered from that man, and we shall have the Bourbons. Thank God, we shall now be real Countesses!” &c.

Among these papers, Napoleon experienced the mortification to meet with some containing very improper remarks respecting himself personally; and those too in the very hand writing of individuals who only the day before had assembled round him, and were already in the enjoyment of his favours.

The first impulse of his indignation was to determine that they should be printed, and to withdraw his protection: a second thought restrained him. “We are so volatile, so inconstant, so easily led away,” said he, “that, after all, I could not be certain that those very people had not really and spontaneously come back to my service: in that case, I should have been punishing them at the very time when they were returning to their duty. I thought it better to seem to know nothing of the matter, and I ordered all their letters to be burnt.”