The Life, Exile and Conversations with Napoleon - Emmanuel-Auguste-Dieudonné Las Cases

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my feelings on hearing this simple remark. The Emperor, by thus appreciating so trivial an enjoyment, contrary to his custom, unconsciously proved to me the effect of all the privations he had suffered, but of which he never complained.

      When we returned from our evening walk, the Emperor read to me a chapter on the Provisional Consuls, which he had dictated to M. de Montholon. Having finished reading, the Emperor took a piece of ribbon, and began to tie together the loose sheets of paper. It was late; the silence of night prevailed around us. My reflections were on that day of a melancholy cast. I gazed on the Emperor. I looked on those hands which had wielded so many sceptres, and which were now tranquilly, and perhaps, not without some degree of pleasure, occupied in the humble task of tying together a few sheets of paper. On these sheets, indeed, were traced events that will never be forgotten; portraits that will decide the judgment of posterity. It is the book of life or death to many whose names are recorded in it. These were the reflections that passed in my mind. “And the Emperor,” thought I, “reads to me what he writes; he familiarly converses with me, asks my opinion, and I freely give it. After all, I am not to be pitied in my exile at St. Helena.”

      15th.—Immediately after dinner the Emperor walked in his favourite path. He had his coffee carried down to him in the garden, and he drank it as he walked about. The conversation turned on love. I must have made some very fine and sentimental remarks on this important subject; for the Emperor laughed at what he styled my prattle, and said that he understood none of my romantic verbiage. Then speaking with an air of levity, he wished to make me believe that he was better acquainted with sensations than sentiments. I made free to remark that he was trying to be thought worse than he was described to be in the authentic, but very secret, accounts that were circulated about the palace. “And what was said of me?” resumed he, with an air of gaiety. “Sire,” I replied, “it is understood that, when in the summit of your power, you suffered yourself to be bound in the chains of love; that you became a hero of romance; that, fired by an unexpected resistance, you conceived an attachment for a lady in private life; that you wrote her above a dozen love-letters; and that her power over you prevailed so far as to compel you to disguise yourself, and to visit her secretly and alone, at her own residence, in the heart of Paris.”—”And how came this to be known?” said he, smiling; which of course amounted to an admission of the fact. “And it was doubtless added,” continued he, “that that was the most imprudent act of my whole life; for, had my mistress proved treacherous, what might not have been my fate—alone and disguised, in the circumstances in which I was placed, amidst the snares with which I was surrounded? But what more is said of me?”—“Sire, it is affirmed that your Majesty’s posterity is not confined to the King of Rome. The secret chronicle states that he has two elder brothers: one the offspring of a fair foreigner, whom you loved in a distant country; the other, the fruit of a connection nearer at hand, in the bosom of your own capital. It was asserted that both had been conveyed to Malmaison, before our departure; the one brought by his mother, and the other introduced by his tutor; and they were described to be the living portraits of their father.”23

      The Emperor laughed much at the extent of my information, as he termed it; and being now in a merry vein, he began to take a frank retrospect of his early years, relating many of the love-affairs and numerous adventures in which he had been engaged. I omit the first; amongst the second he mentioned a supper that took place in the neighbourhood of the Saone at the commencement of the Revolution, and at which he had been present in company with the faithful Desmazzis. He described the whole with the utmost pleasantry.—He had got himself, he observed, into a wasp’s nest, where his patriotic eloquence had to contend strenuously against the contrary doctrines of the other guests, and had nearly brought him into a serious scrape. “You and I,” he continued, “were at that time very far from each other.”—”Not so very far, in point of distance, Sire,” replied, “though certainly very remote with respect to doctrines. At that time I was also in the neighbourhood of the Saone, on one of the quays of Lyons, where crowds of patriots were declaiming against the cannon which they had just discovered in some boats, and which they termed a counter-revolution. I very inopportunely proposed that they should make sure of the cannon, by administering to them the civic oath. However, I narrowly escaped being hanged for my folly. You see, Sire, that I might precisely at that moment have balanced your account, had any disaster befallen you among your aristocrat companions.” This was not the only curious coincidence that was mentioned in the course of the evening. The Emperor, having related to me an interesting circumstance that took place in 1788, said, “Where were you at that time.”—“Sire,” replied I, after a few moments recollection, “I was then at Martinique, supping every evening with the future Empress Josephine.”

      A shower of rain came on and we were obliged to retire from our favourite path, which, the Emperor observed, we might probably at a future period look back to with pleasure. “Perhaps so,” I replied; “but certainly that will not be until we have forsaken it for ever. Meanwhile we must content ourselves with naming it the Path of Philosophy, since it cannot be called the Path of Lethe.”

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      16th.—To-day the Emperor put some questions to me relative to the Fauxbourg Saint-Germain; that last bulwark of the old aristocracy, that refuge of old-fashioned prejudices; the Germanic League, as he called it. I told him that, before his last misfortune, his power had extended into every part of it: it had been invaded, and its name alone remained; it had been shaken and vanquished by glory; and the victories of Austerlitz and Jena, and the triumph of Tilsit, had achieved its conquest. The younger portion of the inhabitants, and all who had generous hearts, could not be insensible to the glory of their country. The Emperor’s marriage with Maria-Louisa gave it the last blow. The few malcontents who remained were either those whose ambition had not been gratified, and who are to be found in all classes, or some obstinate old men, and silly old women, bewailing their past influence. All reasonable and sensible persons had yielded to the superior talents of the Head of the State, and endeavoured to console themselves for their losses in the hope of a better prospect for their children. This became the point towards which all their ideas were directed. They gave the Emperor credit for his partiality to old family names; they agreed that any one else in his place would have annihilated them. They prized very highly the confidence with which the Emperor had collected individuals of ancient family about his person; and they valued him no less for the language he had made use of in making choice of their children to serve in the army:—“These names belong to France and to History; I am the guardian of their glory, I will not allow them to perish.” These and other such expressions had gained him numbers of proselytes. The Emperor here expressed his apprehension that sufficient favour had not been shewn to this party. “My system of amalgamation,” said he, “required it: I wished and even directed favours to be conferred on them: but the ministers, who were the great mediators, never properly fulfilled my real intentions in that respect; either because they had not sufficient foresight, or because they feared that they might thus create rivals for favour, and diminish their own chances. M. Talleyrand, in particular, always shewed great opposition to such a measure, and always resisted my favourable intuitions towards the old nobility.” I observed, however, that the greater part of those whom he had placed near him had soon shewn themselves attached to his person; that they had served him conscientiously, and had, generally speaking, remained faithful to him at the critical moment. The Emperor did not deny it, and even went so far as to say that the twofold event of the King’s return and his own abdication must naturally have had great influence on certain doctrines; and that, for his own part, he could see a great difference between the same conduct pursued in 1814 and in 1815.

      And here I must observe that, since I have become acquainted with the Emperor’s character, I have never known him to evince, for a single moment, the least feeling of anger or animosity against those individuals who had been most to blame in their conduct towards him. He gives no great credit to those who distinguished themselves by their good conduct: they had only done their duty. He is not very indignant against those who acted basely; he partly

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