The Life, Exile and Conversations with Napoleon. Emmanuel-Auguste-Dieudonné Las Cases
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: to prefer taking refuge among a people to whom he had, for the space of twenty years, been an inveterate foe: to suppose their magnanimity equal to his own: to honour their laws so far as to believe that they would protect him from the ostracism of Europe:—certainly such ideas and sentiments are not the reverse of sublime, noble, and great.
At this part of my journal were inserted several pages, full of details very discreditable to the Archbishop of Malines, which were received from the Emperor’s own mouth, or collected from the different individuals about him. I however strike them out, in consideration of the satisfaction which I was informed the Emperor subsequently experienced in perusing M. de Pradt’s Concordats. For my own part, I am perfectly satisfied with numerous other testimonies of the same nature, and derived from the same source. An honourable and voluntary acknowledgment is a thousand times better than all the retorts that can be heaped upon an offender. There are persons to whom atonement is not without its due weight; I am one of these.
Just as I had written the above, I happened to read some lines from the pen of the Abbé de Pradt, which are certainly very fine with respect to diction; but which are still finer on account of their justice and truth. I cannot refrain from transcribing them here; as they make ample amends for those already quoted. A declaration of the Allied Sovereigns at Laybach, in which Napoleon was, in terms of reprobation, pronounced to be the representative of the Revolution, called forth the following observations from the Archbishop of Malines:—
“It is too late to insult Napoleon, now that he is defenceless, after having for so many years crouched at his feet, while he had the power to punish.... Those who are armed should respect a disarmed enemy, and the glory of the conqueror depends in a great measure on the consideration shewn towards the captive, particularly when he yields to superior force, not to superior genius. It is too late to call Napoleon a revolutionist, after having for such a length of time pronounced him to be the restorer of order in France, and, through France, in Europe. It is too late for those to aim the shaft of insult at him who once stretched forth their hands to him as a friend, pledged their faith to him as an ally, and sought to prop a tottering throne by mingling their blood with his.” Farther on he says: “He the representative of the revolution! The revolution broke the bonds of union between France and Rome: he renewed them. The revolution overthrew the temples of the Almighty: he restored them. The revolution created two classes of clergy hostile to each other: he reconciled them. The revolution profaned St. Denis: he purified it, and offered expiation to the ashes of Kings. The revolution subverted the throne: he raised it up, and gave it a new lustre. The revolution banished from their country the nobility of France: he opened to them the gates of France and of his palace, though he knew them to be his irreconcileable enemies, and for the most part the enemies of the public institutions; he reincorporated them with the society from which they had been separated. This representative of a revolution, which is distinguished by the epithet anti-social, brought from Rome the head of the Catholic Church, to anoint his brow with the oil that consecrates diadems! This representative of a revolution, which has been declared hostile to sovereignty, filled Germany with