With the growing inactivity and boredom, the moods of this tortured heart become more and more agonising; this many-toned instrument can no longer be controlled; discords arise.

He has been an emperor! How can he cease to play the part to which the society of a handful of courtiers and the degrading mockery of the enemy constrain him? In order to protest against the use of the title of general and against the illegality of his captivity, he drives out, at first, in full imperial grandeur, his carriage drawn by six horses, and an equerry in uniform riding at each door. His companions appear before him in general’s uniform or in court dress; no one opens conversation uninvited; when he takes his walks in the garden his suite does not approach till he gives a sign; visits are announced by an adjutant general, booted, and wearing a sword. When Gourgaud rises as Countess Montholon enters the room, he is reproved for this breach of etiquette.

Meanwhile he makes fun of the whole thing, mockingly calls Gourgaud “my grand master of the horse,” or announces at table: “I have been anointed by the pope; thereby I have become a bishop, and have the power to consecrate you as priests.” When he teases his friends about their all being in the “Dictionary of Weathercocks,” whose pages he is at the moment fluttering, Gourgaud ventures to say that the Emperor himself deserves a place in it. “Oh; and pray why?”

“Because you first of all recognised the republic, Sire, and yet, later, you were the crown.”

“You are right. Oh, well, the Empire was certainly the best of the republics!”

At the feast of Epiphany, he has a cake made for the children. Then he crowns little Napoléon Bertrand as king. When he is informed that there has been a complaint from the governor about the expenses of his household, and that, now that the price of meat has risen to forty sous, they must be more moderate in their consumption, he turns the matter off with a laugh, saying: “Parbleu! You might have answered that it costs us more than a crown.”

Never before has so much self-control been forced on him. Impassively he reads Lowe’s answer to a statement of grievances from Bertrand, who had said something about “the Emperor.” The governor writes that he is not aware of the presence of any emperor on the island.—The prisoner asks Gourgaud to order his horse to be saddled. Gourgaud replies that he has not seen the animal for three days, since the blacksmith insists on being paid three napoleons before he will send it back. The Emperor masters his anger, and says nothing more at the time; but next day he bursts out at Gourgaud: “Why did you insult me by talking to me about the blacksmith’s bill?” The day before, by a superhuman effort, he had managed to restrain his wrath, but by the torturing thoughts of the intervening hours his pride had been broken. The adjutant’s sullen reply had disturbed the Emperor’s equanimity quite as much as Austria’s desertion had done in earlier years.

A soldier and a southron, he is choked sometimes by the passion for vengeance. On one occasion, when uneatable meat is served at dinner, he contents himself with the remark: “I should trouble little about myself, if I could only feel sure that some day our humiliations would be proclaimed to the world, so that those who are responsible for them would be covered with shame!”

With a sublimity of spirit which grows in him now, he tries to moderate the natural rebelliousness of his disposition: “I am living here under a weight, so to speak; a weight which compresses the spring, but does not break it. Resignation—that is the dominion of reason, the real triumph of the soul.” This masterful man does his utmost to regulate his own conduct in accordance with the foregoing axiom. Subsequently he says: “Misfortune has its good side; it teaches us truths.... For the first time, I am able to contemplate history as a philosopher.”

For the first time, too, he is able to contemplate the present with a tranquil mind. During the early weeks of his stay on the island, when he was out walking with a pretty young Englishwoman, he conversed with her agreeably about various topics: how the climate was bad for the complexion; Ossian; the plantations. At this moment some negro slaves carrying heavy boxes crossed the path, and the lady called to them imperiously: “Get out of the way!”

The Emperor interposed: “But, Madame, please remember that the men are carrying burdens!”

Collapse of lady! Yet Napoleon Bonaparte himself would not have been so considerate in the days before he came to St. Helena.

In all matters now, except when he is playing the shadow emperor in pursuance of his feud with Lowe, Napoleon adopts a simplicity of life which outdoes that even of his poorest days as a lieutenant. When for some time there has been very little to eat, and the cook has had to eke things out with French beans, he eats them enthusiastically, praises the dish and the cooking.

“In Paris, I could get along with twelve francs a day. Dinner frs. 1.50; reading room; theatre in the evening, pit; I should hire a room for frs. 20 a month. I should only want one servant; and I should associate exclusively with people of like fortune. One can be happy in any station in life. When my mother sang lullabies over my cradle, there was not a word about what I was destined to become. I believe ‘Monsieur Bonaparte’ would have been quite as happy as ‘Emperor Napoleon.’ Everything in life is relative.”

His doctor has a fainting fit. Coming to himself, he finds that he is being attended to, not by a servant, but by the Emperor in person. Napoleon has lifted him on to the bed, has unfastened the collar of his shirt, and is kneeling beside him, administering vinegar.—When Cipriani, the Corsican servant, is dying, the Emperor asks the doctor whether a visit from the master would stimulate the man’s flagging forces.

“The excitement would kill him.”

“Oh, well, I suppose I had better not go.”

When playing reversi, he establishes a bank. For whose benefit? The money is to be used to buy the freedom of the most beautiful female slave on the island. One evening, his companions find him at work beside the lamp, slowly and carefully stitching the pages of a manuscript.

Sometimes, however, his dreams reawaken, and flutter against the bars of the cage. “I wish they would transfer me to a desert island, where I could have two thousand people of my own choice, with muskets and cannon. I should found a glorious colony, and should end my days happily in that model land. There I should not find it necessary to be at grips all the time with antiquated ideas.” Having said this apropos of nothing in particular, he passes on to the details of the scheme, dictating specifications—how much money and stores would be needed for the founding of his colony.

A chained sculptor, his plastic impulses must be content with such outlets in the world of imagination; but, side by side with these capriccios, he displays a heroic simplicity. One day, during the early weeks at St. Helena, he is out riding with Las Cases. “We came to a field that was being ploughed. The Emperor dismounted, and took the handles of the plough. With incredible speed, he drove a long and perfectly straight furrow. All this without saying a word until he had finished, when he told me to give the ploughman a napoleon. We remounted, and rode on our way.”