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

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СКАЧАТЬ the voyage, and from the time of our landing at St. Helena, it had ceased to be serviceable to the Emperor. Our dispersion, the uncertainty of our establishment, our wants, and the irregular way in which they were supplied, necessarily created disorder.

      As soon as we were all assembled at Longwood, the Emperor determined to arrange his establishment, and to assign to each of us an employment suited to our respective capacities. Reserving to the Grand Marshal the general control and superintendence of the whole household; he consigned to M. de Montholon all the domestic details. To M. Gourgaud he intrusted the direction of the stables: and I was appointed to take care of the property and furniture, and to superintend the management of our supplies. The latter part of my duty appeared to interfere too much with the regulation of domestic details. I conceived that it would be conducive to the general advantage, if these two departments were under the control of one individual, and I soon succeeded in accomplishing this object.

      Every thing now proceeded tolerably well, and we were certainly more comfortable than before. But, however reasonable might be the regulations made by the Emperor, they, nevertheless, sowed the seeds of discontent, which took root, and occasionally developed themselves. One thought himself a loser by the change; another sought to attach too high an importance to his office; and a third conceived that he had been wronged in the general division of duties. We were no longer the members of one family, each exerting his best endeavours to secure the advantage of the whole. We were far from putting into practice that which necessity seemed to dictate to us; and a wreck of luxury, or a remnant of ambition, frequently became an object of dispute.

      Though attachment to the person of the Emperor had united us around him, yet chance, and not sympathy, had brought us together. Our connexion was purely fortuitous, and not the result of any natural affinity. Thus, at Longwood, we were encircled round a centre, but without any cohesion with each other. How could it be otherwise? We were almost all strangers to one another, and, unfortunately, our different conditions, ages, and characters, were calculated to make us continue so.

      These circumstances, though in themselves trifling, had the vexatious effect of depriving us of our most agreeable resources. They banished that confidence, that interchange of sentiment, and that intimate union, which are calculated to soothe even the most cruel misfortunes. But, on the other hand, these very circumstances served to develope many excellent traits in the Emperor’s character. They were apparent in his endeavours to produce among us unity and conformity of sentiment; his constant care to remove every just cause of jealousy; the voluntary abstraction by which he averted his attention from that which he wished not to observe; and finally, the paternal expressions of displeasure, of which we were occasionally the objects, and which (to the honour of all be it said) were avoided as cautiously, and received as respectfully, as though they had emanated from the throne of the Tuileries.

      Who in the world can now pretend to know the Emperor in his character of a private man better than myself?—Who else was with him during two months of solitude in the desert of Briars?—Who else accompanied him in his long walks by moonlight, and enjoyed so many hours in his society? Who, like me, had the opportunity of choosing the moment, the place, and the subject of his conversation? Who, besides myself, heard him call to mind the charms of his boyhood, or describe the pleasures of his youth, and the bitterness of his recent sorrow? I am convinced that I know his character thoroughly, and that I can now explain many circumstances which, at the time of their occurrence, seemed to many difficult to be understood. I can now very well comprehend that which struck us so forcibly, and which particularly characterized him in the days of his power; namely, that no individual ever permanently incurred the displeasure of Napoleon: however marked might be his disgrace, however deep the gulf into which he was plunged, he might still confidently hope to be restored to favour. Those who had once enjoyed intimacy, whatever cause of offence they might give him, never totally forfeited his regard. The Emperor is eminently gifted with two excellent qualities;—a vast fund of justice, and a disposition naturally prone to attachment. Amidst all his vexations and fits of anger, a sentiment of justice still predominates. He is sure to turn an attentive ear to sound arguments, and, if left to himself, candidly brings them forward whenever they occur to his mind. He never forgets services performed for him, nor habits he has contracted. Sooner or later he invariably casts a thought on those who may have incurred his displeasure; he reflects on what they have suffered, considers their punishment as sufficient, recals them, when they are perhaps forgotten by the world; and they again enjoy his good graces, to the astonishment of themselves as well as of others. Of this there have been many instances. The Emperor is sincere in his attachments, without making a show of what he feels. When once he becomes used to a person, he cannot easily bear separation. He observes and condemns his faults, blames his own choice, expressing his displeasure in the most unreserved way; but still there is nothing to fear: these are but so many new ties of regard.

      It will probably be a matter of surprise that I should sketch the Emperor’s character in so simple a style. All that is usually written about him is so far fetched: it has been thought necessary to employ antitheses and brilliant colouring; to seek for effect, and to rack the imagination for high-flown phrases. For my own part, I merely describe what I see, and express what I feel. This reflection, by the by, comes à propos.

      The Emperor was to-day reading with me, in the English papers, a portrait of himself, drawn by the Archbishop of Malines, and worked up with innumerable witticisms, affected antitheses and contrasts. He desired the Grand Marshal to transcribe it word for word. The following are the principal points: “The mind of Napoleon,” says the Abbé de Pradt, in his Embassy to Warsaw, in 1812, “was vast; but after the manner of the Orientals: and through a contradictory disposition, it descended as it were, by the effect of its own weight, to details which might justly be called low. His first idea was always grand, and his second mean and petty. His mind was like his purse; munificence and meanness held each a string. His genius, which was at once adapted to the stage of the world, and the mountebank’s show, resembled a royal robe joined to a harlequin’s jacket. He was the man of extremes; one, who having commanded the Alps to bow down, the Simplon to smooth its ruggedness, and the sea to advance or recede from its shores, ended by surrendering himself to an English cruiser. Endowed with wonderful and infinite shrewdness; glittering with wit; seizing or creating, in every question, new and unperceived relations; abounding in lively and picturesque images, animated and pointed expressions, the more forcible from the very incorrectness of his language, which always bore a sort of foreign impress; sophistical, subtle, and changeable, to excess, he adopted different rules of optics from those by which other men are guided. Add to this the delirium of success, the habit of drinking from the enchanted cup, and intoxicating himself with the incense of the world: and you may form an idea of the man who, uniting in his caprices all that is lofty and mean in the human character, majestic in the splendour of sovereignty, and peremptory in command, with all that is ignoble and base, even in his grandest achievements, joining the treacherous ambush to the subversion of thrones—presents altogether such a Jupiter-Scapin, as never before figured on the scene of life.”

      Certainly here is abundance of wit, and of the most studied kind. I pass over the indecorous and disgraceful fact that a reverend prelate, an Archbishop loaded with the bounty of his sovereign, to whom, during his prosperity, he paid the most assiduous court, and offered the most abject flattery, should, in the adversity of that sovereign, indulge in language so trivial, grotesque, and insulting, as that above quoted. Without noticing the harlequin’s coat, and Jupiter-Scapin, I shall merely dwell on the merit of the Abbé de Pradt’s judgment, when he says that “the Emperor’s first idea is always grand, and his second petty; that he is the man of extremes: one who having commanded the Alps to bow down, the Simplon to smooth its ruggedness, and the sea to advance and recede from its shores, ended by surrendering himself to an English cruiser.” The Abbé de Pradt must have formed but a faint idea of the sublimity, grandeur, and magnanimity of that noble act. To withdraw himself from a people who were misled by faithless intriguers, in order to remove every obstacle to their welfare: to sacrifice his own personal interests, for the sake of averting the evils of a civil war without national results: to disdain honourable and secure, but dependent, asylums: СКАЧАТЬ