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

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ first pages of this book: rapes, poison, incest, assassination, and all that belongs to them, are heaped by the author upon his hero, and that from his earliest childhood. It is true that the author appears to have given himself little concern about bestowing on these calumnies any air of probability; and that he himself sometimes demonstrates their impossibility, and sometimes refutes them by anachronisms, alibis, and contradictions of every kind; mistakes in the names, persons, and most authentic facts, &c. Thus, for example, when Napoleon was only about ten or twelve years of age, and was confined within the bounds of the Military School, he causes him to commit outrages which would require at least the age of manhood, and a certain degree of liberty, &c. The author makes him undertake what he calls the robberies of Italy, at the head of eight thousand galley-slaves, who had escaped from the bagnio at Toulon. Afterwards, he makes twenty thousand Poles abandon the Austrian ranks to join the standard of the French General, &c. The same author makes Napoleon arrive at Paris in Fructidor, when all the world knows that he never quitted his army. He makes him treat with the Prince of Condé, and ask the hand of the Princess Royal as the price of his treachery. I omit a number of other things equally absurd and impudent. It is evident that, with respect to the loose and ridiculous anecdotes particularly, he only collected all he could hear; but from what source has he drawn his information? The greater part of the anecdotes have certainly had their rise in certain defamatory and malevolent circles of Paris; but, as long as they were on that ground, they still preserved the appearance of some wit, salt, point, colour, some grace in the relation; whilst the stories in this book have evidently descended from the drawing-rooms into the streets, and have only been picked up after rolling in the kennel. The English allowed it to be so coarse that, except to the most vulgar classes of society, the work was a poison which carried its own antidote along with it.

      It may probably excite astonishment that I did not lay aside such a production upon reading the first page of it; but its coarseness and vulgarity are so gross that it cannot excite anger: on the other hand, there is no disgust which may not be got over in order to amuse the heavy hours at St. Helena. We consider ourselves fortunate in having any thing to peruse. “Time,” said the Emperor, a few days ago, “is the only thing of which we have too much here.” I therefore continued the work. And besides, I may perhaps be allowed to say that it is not without some pleasure that I now read the absurd tales, the lies, and calumnies, which an author pretends to derive, as usual, from the best authority, relating to objects which I am now so perfectly well acquainted with, and which have become as familiar to me as the details of my own life; and it is likewise gratifying to lay down pages filled with the falsest representations, and exhibiting a portrait purely fanciful to study truth by the side of the real personage, in his own conversation, ever full of novelties and grand ideas.

      The Emperor having desired me to come to him this morning after breakfast, I found him in his morning-gown lying on his sofa. The conversation led him to ask me what I was reading at this moment. I replied that it was one of the most notorious and scurrilous libels published against him, and I quoted to him upon the spot some of its most abominable stories. He laughed heartily at them, and desired to see the work. I sent for it, and we went over it together. In passing from one horrid calumny to another, he exclaimed, “Jesus!” crossing himself repeatedly—a custom which I have perceived to be familiar with him, in his little friendly circle, whenever he meets with monstrous, impudent, cynical assertions, which excite his indignation and surprise without rousing his anger. As we proceeded, the Emperor analyzed certain facts, and corrected points of which the author might have known something. Sometimes he shrugged up his shoulders out of compassion; at others, he laughed heartily; but he never betrayed the least sign of anger. When he read the article which speaks of his great debaucheries and excesses, the violences and the outrages which he is represented to have committed, he observed that the author, doubtless, wished to make a hero of him in every respect; that he willingly left him to those who had charged him with impotency; that it was for these gentlemen to agree among themselves; adding, merrily, “that every man was not so unlucky as the pleader of Toulouse.” They were in the wrong, however, he continued, to attack him upon the score of morals; him, who, as all the world knew, had so singularly improved them. They could not be ignorant that he was not at all inclined, by nature, to debauchery; and that, moreover, the multiplicity of his affairs would never have allowed him time to indulge in it. When he came to the pages where his mother was described as acting the most disgusting and abject part at Marseilles, he stopped, and repeated several times with an accent of indignation, and something approaching to grief, “Ah! Madame!—Poor Madame!—with her lofty character! if she were to read this!—Great God!”

      We thus passed more than two hours, after which he began to dress. Doctor O’Meara was introduced to him: it was the usual hour of his being admitted. “Dottore,” said the Emperor to him in Italian, whilst he was shaving himself, “I have just read one of your fine London productions against me.” The Doctor’s countenance indicated a wish to know what it was. I shewed him the book at a distance; it was himself who had lent it to me: he was disconcerted. “It is a very just remark,” continued the Emperor, “that it is the truth only which gives offence. I have not been angry for a moment; but I have frequently laughed at it.” The Doctor endeavoured to reply, and puzzled himself with high-flown sentences: it was, he said, an infamous, disgusting libel; every body knew it to be such; nobody paid any attention to it: nevertheless, persons might be found who would believe it, from its not having been replied to. “But how can that be helped?” said the Emperor. “If it should enter any one’s head to put in print that I had grown hairy, and walked on all fours, there are people who would believe it, and would say that God had punished me as he did Nebuchadnezzar. And what could I do? There is no remedy in such cases.” The Doctor went away, hardly able to believe the gaiety, the indifference, the good-nature of which he had just been witness: with regard to ourselves, we were now accustomed to it.

THE EMPEROR RESOLVES TO LEARN ENGLISH, &C.

       Table of Contents

      16th.—About three o’clock the Emperor desired me to come and converse with him whilst he was dressing himself; we afterwards took a few turns in the garden. He observed, accidentally, that it was a shame he could not yet read English. I assured him that, if he had continued his lessons after the two that I had given when we were off Madeira, he would now be able to read every kind of English books. He was thoroughly persuaded of this, and ordered me to oblige him henceforth to take a lesson every day. The conversation then led me to observe that I had just given my son his first lesson in mathematics. It is a branch of knowledge which the Emperor is very fond of, and in which he is particularly skilled. He was astonished that I could teach my son so much without the help of any work, and without any copy-book; he said, he did not know that I was so learned in this way, and threatened me with examining, when I did not expect it, both the master and the scholar. At dinner he attacked what he called the Professor of Mathematics, who was very near being posed by him: one question did not wait for another, and they were frequently very keen. He never ceased to regret that the mathematics were not taught at a very early age in the Lyceums. He said that all the intentions he had formed respecting the Universities had been frustrated, complained bitterly of M. de Fontanes, lamenting that, whilst he was obliged to be at a distance, carrying on the war, they spoiled all he had done at home, &c. This led the Emperor back to the first years of his life, to father Patrault, his Professor of Mathematics, whose history he gave us: I have already introduced it.

FIRST ENGLISH LESSON, &c.

       Table of Contents

      17th.—The Emperor took his first lesson in the English language to-day. And as it was my intention to put him at once in a situation to read the papers with readiness, this first lesson consisted of nothing more than getting acquainted with an English newspaper; in studying the form and plan of it; in learning the places that are always given to the different subjects which it СКАЧАТЬ