Читать книгу The Life, Exile and Conversations with Napoleon - Emmanuel-Auguste-Dieudonné Las Cases - Страница 94

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31st.—Our days passed, as it may be supposed, in an excessively stupid monotony. Ennui, reflection, and melancholy, were our formidable enemies; occupation our great and only refuge. The Emperor followed his pursuits with great regularity. English was become an affair of importance to him. It was now nearly a fortnight since he took his first lesson, and from that moment he had devoted some hours every day, beginning at noon, to that study, sometimes with truly admirable ardour, sometimes with visible disgust; an alternative which kept me in the greatest anxiety. I considered success as of the utmost importance: every day I dreaded seeing him abandon the ground gained on the day preceding; and consequently being regarded as having wearied him with the most tedious labour, without having produced the fortunate result that I had promised myself. On the other hand, I was also daily spurred on by the consciousness that I was approaching the goal at which I aimed. The attainment of the English language was a real and serious conquest to the Emperor. Formerly, he said, it had cost him a hundred thousand crowns a year, merely for translations; and how did he know whether he had them exact—whether they were faithful? Now that we were imprisoned, as it were, in the midst of this language, surrounded by its productions, all the great changes and questions which the Emperor had given rise to, on the continent, had been taken up by the English on the opposite side; and in their works presented so many new faces to him, to which he had hitherto been a stranger.

It may be added that French books were scarce with us; that the Emperor knew them all, and had read them even to satiety; whilst we could easily procure a multitude of English works altogether new to him. Besides, to learn the language of a foreigner, always prepossesses him in our favour; it is a satisfaction to one’s self; it facilitates intercourse, and forms in a certain degree the commencement of a sort of connection between the parties. However this may be, I began to perceive the limits of our difficulties; I anticipated the moment when the Emperor would have got through all the inevitable disagreeables incident to beginners. But let any one form an idea, if possible, of what the scholastic study of conjugations, declensions, and articles must have been to him. It could never have been accomplished without great courage on the scholar’s side and some degree of artifice on the part of the master. He often asked me whether he did not deserve the ferula, of which he now comprehended the vast utility in schools; he declared, jestingly, that he should have made much greater progress himself, had he stood in fear of correction. He complained of not having improved; but, in reality, the progress he had made would have been extraordinary in any one.

The more grand, rapid, and comprehensive the mind is, the less it is capable of dwelling on regular minute details. The Emperor, who discovered wonderful facility in apprehending all that regarded the philosophy of the language, evinced very little capacity for retaining its material mechanism. He had a quick understanding and a very bad memory; this vexed him much; he conceived that he did not get on. Whenever I could subject the matters in question to any regular law or analogy, they were classed and comprehended in an instant; the scholar even preceded the master in his applications and deductions; but as to learning by heart, and retaining the gross elements of the language, it was a most difficult affair. He was constantly confounding one thing with another; and it would have been thought too fastidious to require too scrupulous a regularity at first. Another difficulty was that, with the same letters, the same vowels, as ours, a totally different pronunciation is required; the scholar would allow of none but ours; and the master would have multiplied the difficulties and disagreeables tenfold, had he required any better. Besides, the scholar, even in his own language, was incorrigibly addicted to maiming proper names and foreign words; he pronounced them quite at his own discretion, and when once they had passed his lips, they always remained the same in spite of every thing, because he had thus got them, once for all, lodged, as it were in his head. The same thing happened with respect to most of our English words: and the master found it best to have the prudence and patience to let it pass; leaving it to time to rectify by degrees, if it should ever be possible, all these defects. From these concurring circumstances actually sprang a new language. It was understood by me alone, it is true; but it procured the Emperor the pleasure of reading English, and he could, in the strictest sense, make himself understood by writing in that language. This was a great deal; it was every thing.

In the mean time, the Emperor regularly continued his Campaigns of Egypt with the Grand Marshal. My Campaign of Italy had long been finished; we were always touching and retouching it, with respect to its typographical form, the arrangement of the chapters, the division of the paragraphs, &c.

From time to time he also dictated separate parts to Messrs. Gourgaud and Montholon. To all this work he added a very little exercise: a walk now and then, sometimes a ride in the calash, scarcely ever on horseback. On the 30th, however, he chose to return to our Valley of Silence, which we had long deserted. We were near the middle of the vale; the passage was stopped up with dead bushes, and a kind of bar to keep out cattle. The servant (the faithful Aly) dismounted, as usual, to clear the way for us. We passed on: but, whilst the servant was engaged in assisting us, his horse had strayed from him, and, when he attempted to catch him, ran away. A great quantity of rain had fallen, and the horse sank into a quagmire, similar to that in which the Emperor, a few days after our arrival at Longwood, had stuck so tenaciously as to make it doubtful whether he would not remain in it. The servant ran after us to say that he must remain for the purpose of disengaging his horse. We were in a very difficult narrow road, riding one by one. It was not until some time after that the Emperor heard us mention to one another the accident of the servant. He found great fault because we had not waited for him, and desired the Grand Marshal and General Gourgaud to return for him. The Emperor dismounted to wait for them, and ascended a little elevation, on which he looked like a figure on a pedestal in the midst of ruins. He had the bridle of his horse passed round his arm, and began to whistle an air; mute nature echoed the strains, but only to the barren desert. “Yet,” thought I, “a short time ago, how many sceptres he wielded! how many crowns belonged to him! how many kings were at his feet! It is true,” said I, “that in the eyes of those who approach him, who daily see and hear him, he is still greater than ever! This is the sentiment, the opinion of all about him. We serve him with no less ardour; we love him with greater affection than ever.”

But now the Grand Marshal and Gourgaud arrived; they assisted the Emperor to mount again, and we proceeded. These gentlemen acknowledged that without their assistance the horse could never have been saved; the united efforts of all three had barely sufficed to disengage him. A considerable time afterwards, turning an elbow of the road, the Emperor observed that the servant had not followed, and said they ought to have remained till they had found he was in a condition to come on. They thought that he had staid behind to clean his horse a little. In the course of our ride, at several other turnings, the Emperor repeated the same observation. We arrived at the Grand Marshal’s, went in, and rested there a few minutes; as we came out, the Emperor asked whether the servant had passed on; no one had seen him. When we arrived at Longwood, his first question was whether the man had returned. He had been at home some time, having returned by a different road. I may perhaps have dwelt somewhat too much on this trifling circumstance; but I did so because it appeared to me perfectly characteristic. In this domestic solicitude, the reader will find it difficult to recognise the insensible, obdurate, wicked, cruel monster—the tyrant, of whom he has so often and so long been told.