How big Corsica is! How high her mountains! Bastia is an admirable harbour; its fortifications can be seen through a spyglass. If taken from the eastern side....
When the ruler of Elba rides among the hills of his new home, the silhouette of his old home lies spread before him; everything looms larger across the water. Forty times bigger, ten times as many inhabitants; he has all the figures, to a unit, in his head. Elba is nothing more than a mole-hill.
On the clear May morning when he landed, he was welcomed by a deputation of peasants and petty burghers in Porto Ferrajo. Timidly they had paid their compliments to the man who was to reign over them. But their astonishment was great when, instead of inviting them to a banquet, he leapt into the saddle and rode off to inspect the fortifications. On the morrow, orders began to fly about the sleepy little isle: Pianosa was to have two more batteries; the mole must be lengthened; the roads improved. When first the four hundred grenadiers appeared in the land, the natives looked at them askance as men of a foreign race. Soon, however, the forces were increased by the creation of a foreign battalion, and a National Guard. Napoleon once more has an army of over a thousand men; soon he has a small flotilla likewise. What for? Just for him to see after and take care of. He has a Council of State; Bertrand and Drouot (the generals who have accompanied him into exile) and a dozen inhabitants of the island, are members; and, together with Napoleon who presides over the assembly, they discuss improvements in the iron mines and the salt pits. Have you no mulberry culture here? The silkworms bring in good money over there, in Lyons; and if the French government imposes a tariff upon our produce, we can easily sell to Italy.
Save! We are so poor, and France makes no move to pay the promised allowance. The white house is smaller than the one in Ajaccio, and very much simpler; but there is no money for building additional accommodation; and when the “grand marshal” Bertrand draws up a list of mattresses and other bedgear, his master underlines the mistakes,—for he has every detail of his establishment by heart.
Is this indefatigable man never to realise what a parody is his administration over the tiny island, the diminutive army, the small household? Never! Here in Elba, where in the best of spirits and health he throws himself whole-heartedly into his undertakings, he comes to realise that it was not the masses that had allured him. To order, to build, to press his finger into the wax of humanity, these things he must do, urged onward by the impulse of his artist’s soul. But, since humanity is not as wax, and since his constructions can never be finished and are always vibrant with life; since the opposition of material forces also takes a hand in the game, even when matter seems to have been conquered—he can only fulfil his mission by coercing and conquering the human spirit, by issuing orders and bringing suggestions to bear, by constant vigilance and constant upbuilding; in a word, by ruling. He has never been a dilettante or a parvenu; and, this being so, he drives the little wheel to-day with just as much precision and earnestness as he had driven the earth’s sphere in former days.
But soon, when most of his enterprises are in good going order, he feels he is becoming lazy, even when he is studying mathematics. This causes him to reconsider his position.
“It is by no means difficult to accustom oneself to a life of meditation,” he writes, “if one possesses within oneself the necessary reserves. I work hard in my study; when I emerge I have the delightful spectacle of my old grenadiers in front of me.... Born kings must suffer terribly when they are dethroned, for pomp and etiquette are the very marrow of their lives. For my part, I have always been a soldier, and became a king only by chance, so that these things have been nothing but a burden to me, whereas wars and camps come naturally. Out of my great past, I regret naught but my soldiers. After all my treasures and my crowns, my most cherished possessions are the couple of French uniforms they have allowed me to keep.”
These are the words of an unpretentious king. Do people not believe him? And does Europe laugh when, in his kingdom of Lilliput, he preserves the forms of kingship? Does Europe begin to suspect a secret in the island? The innate dignity, whereby long ago the young general had wrung respect from the bearers of inherited rank, to-day is still able to hold satirical visitors in check. Every one admires the natural simplicity of the lonely man who, despite the exiguity of his dwelling, still holds to the title of “Majesty.” He lives in his island sans palace or fittings, sans court or ministers, only surrounded with the aureole of his deeds.
This return home brings solace to his heart—for Elba is Italy. The peasant speaks to him in the language Napolione had learned at Letizia’s knee. The Mediterranean amid whose waters he was born and reared, the islands with their quiet shores, do they not all of them bring back memories of youthful days? Stone-pines, fig trees, and crags; the white houses among the vineyards; the sails, and the fishermen’s nets; pride of clan, and the headkerchief worn at church; all these things seem to take him gently by the hand and lead him back to the dreams of childhood. Now the storm-racked nerves relax, and at length know a spell of repose. In these wholesome months, the Emperor comes to look upon his career as a visionary flight into the land of childish imagination; and it is only when he contemplates the men of his old guard that he realises something did happen during the years that separate Corsica from Elba.
“The Emperor lives very contentedly on his island,” writes one who accompanied him there. “He seems to have forgotten the past. The management of his small household gives him occupation; he is now looking out for a suitable site to build his country-seat; we ride, and drive, and sail round the coasts as much as we please.”
Since he has plenty of time on his hands, and since thrift is essential, he examines everything, to the minutest details. Just as, in the Tuileries, he himself drew up the list of his clothing, so now, in Elba, he says to Bertrand: “My underlinen is in a lamentable state. Part of it has never been unpacked, and it has not been marked. Give orders that everything must be laid out in drawers and presses, and that no one is to be given anything belonging to our court without furnishing a receipt.... There are not enough ordinary chairs. Have a sample sent from Pisa; they must not cost more than five francs apiece.”
Europe laughs when it hears of this. Posterity stands bewildered before such energetic renunciation.
Once only do we hear a gentle sigh. He has climbed to the top of a hill whence he can look over the whole of his realm. Surveying the prospect, he says: “One must acknowledge that the island is very small.” Like distant thunder, the fate of a man seems to rumble in these words; for an all too great imagination, confined within the narrow limits of Europe and cribbed within the circle of the folk intelligence of the nineteenth century, is doomed at the outset to be crushed.
With the summer, comes his mother. She, alone, is happy. Her son is no longer threatened with assassination or with battles. Here, all is peaceful and warm; Elba is almost as lovely as Corsica. Daily intercourse with him renews for her the good old times. It is as well that she has come; for, from the millions which she alone has put by, she now brings her son what he needs; and when he receives her banknotes, may we not picture mother and son smiling at one another? On his name-day, she invites him to a little rustic feast.
painting by Jacques Louis David.
(From the “Corpus Imaginum” of the Photographic Society, Charlottenburg.)]
A dozen and more St. Napoleon days she has spent in Paris: the guns would fire the salute from the Invalides, Masses would be said; Senate and ministers, the court and foreign diplomats, would throng the halls of the Tuileries. When, in the evening, the rooms were filled with guests, and, amid the strains of music, there came and went all that France possessed of great names, of beauty, and of precious jewels; when the fireworks filled the August night-sky with brightness, and thousands of tiny lamps formed the initial N.—Letizia, surrounded by the kings who were the fruit of her womb, would stand silent and proud, thinking the old words so full of ominous warning. But to-day she is blithe; to-day she compares this jocund festivity with the little town of Ajaccio; to-day, for the first time, she thinks: “All the same, we achieved something fine!”
Letizia had been able, while in Rome, to heal many wounds dealt in the heat of the fray. The pope, on his return, had pardoned the mother of his sometime foe. She was not surprised when the whole court, when even her secretary (a Corsican), speedily went over to the Bourbon king. Has she not always foretold it? Caroline, alone, is not permitted to appear before her.
Pauline, Princess Borghese, merry and brilliant, does not hang long in the wind. She has always been the most affectionate, and has been clever enough to prefer real diamonds and nights of love to uncertain thrones and crowns. She comes to the island, so that, with her mother, she may bring cheer to the Emperor. She shakes out a basketful of gossip and news for his delectation.
Hardly a word from his brothers. One letter comes from Lucien. What propositions can he be laying before his banished brother? Will he, who lives in princely fashion in Rome, with magnanimous generosity offer Napoleon money or bring his influence to bear in his imperial brother’s behalf? What does the “Prince of Canino” by the pope’s grace write in his letter? He owns smelting furnaces, and Elba has iron ore wherewith to feed them: he asks his brother to provide him with the minerals. Crowns and gold, he has refused; but iron, which his brother still possesses, he can make good use of. Maybe he, who is a poet, is enjoying the farce of these blast-furnaces! Is it not a kindness that one still thinks of the exile? Who else writes?
Josephine is dead. A few weeks after Napoleon’s departure, she died at Malmaison. No one knows if she ever wrote to him; what is certain is that she left debts amounting to three millions, which he had to pay. Hortense has been separated from her husband. She has become a duchess, and has made her most graceful curtsey before the Bourbon king, in the very room where she and her mother had held sway for so long. Little Léon, whom Letizia had for a time with her in Rome, resembles his father; he is reported to be courageous and full of pranks. These are all the members of Napoleon’s family about whom he has news.
An English vessel brings the unknown lady who visited Fontainebleau to the island. In a marquee, beneath the chestnut trees, the Emperor receives Countess Walewska. For two days and two nights they are inseparable. The Emperor only issues forth to give the necessary orders, and the four-year-old boy, dressed in the Polish national costume, plays in the meadow with the tall grenadiers. The Emperor would like to keep Walewska by his side, but he does not wish to provide the empress with an excuse for not coming to live with him. Thus, for the second time, he sacrifices on the altar of the Habsburg princess the phantom of his happiness. Walewska sails away. Her ship encounters bad weather, and the Emperor is filled with restless anxiety until he receives tidings that she has arrived safely at Leghorn.
How marvellously are the threads weaving themselves into the tissue of a legend! With wizard spells this man of forty-five links up epochs and customs. Here he is, a petty prince on a Mediterranean isle: he receives his beloved, the lady with whom he had lived in the imperial palace at Schönbrunn when he himself was an enemy and unknown to the proprietor; to-day he is once again this man’s foe, and another woman whom he had invited to his arms from the self-same palace has long since forsaken him; yet his natural son, born in a lonely castle in Poland, is playing beneath the trees of the southern land and wears the dress of a foreign folk which the Emperor had once promised to free. Who could believe that all this had come to pass within five years? A hundred years seemed likelier for the accomplishment of so many events. With such nets, what other fish could one expect to catch but the golden ones of the fairy tale? A thousand years ago a great emperor was banished and left forsaken on an island; but from a distant realm a beautiful, tragical woman found the way to him across the sea, and brought him his son.
In truth Napoleon is forsaken by wife and child. This loss cuts him no less, maybe even more cruelly, than the loss of power, for his conception of marriage is conservative and bourgeois. Constantly, even during the via dolorosa of his last journey through France, he has written to Marie Louise; he has planned a new house for her. But his letters remain unanswered. Believing that his correspondence has been intercepted, he at last writes to the grand duke of Tuscany, her uncle, begging for news; for “I trust that Your Royal Highness has preserved a little friendliness towards me, in spite of the events which have changed the sentiments of so many men.... If so, I beg that you will look favourably upon the tiny commune which feels the same towards you as does Tuscany....” Ay, thus writes the prince of this diminutive isle, a prince with no more than twenty thousand subjects, to the mighty grand duke! But the grand duke keeps silence.
When Napoleon realises the sluggishness of the human heart, his old defiance regains the ascendant. It is with a sense of relief that we hear his well-known voice ring out again, after the anguish of this grovelling letter—a letter that would never have been written but for his wife’s sake. He exclaims: “These sovereigns, who were wont to send me, in all solemnity, their delegations of ambassadors, who gave a daughter of their blood to share my bed, and who called me ‘Brother,’ are now cursing me as a usurper, and spit upon my picture since they cannot spit upon the original. They have bespattered the majesty of kings with mud! What is the title of emperor? Had I no other name to bequeath, posterity would laugh.... In classical days, the vanquished were robbed of their children, that these might be paraded before the people when the conqueror was celebrating his triumph....”
What must be the tenor of Napoleon’s thoughts when he learns how, on that shameful day of cowardice and confusion, the lad of four had refused to leave the palace of his father; of how, when the little king of Rome had met his grandfather for the first time, he had uttered the innocent words: “I have seen the emperor of Austria. He is not handsome.” This was precisely what Napoleon had wished to avoid. The fate of Astyanax has been prepared for the boy; and even though he is made much of, the child is well aware that he must no longer mention his father’s name. Though he has received the symbolical names of Napoleon Francis and thus embodies the unhappy union of two antagonistic worlds, the name of Napoleon is soon destined to be heard no more. For, when the young cuckoo is introduced into the Habsburg nest, he is called Francis, and nothing else. Later, when the empress’ secretary is leaving Vienna and presents himself to take farewell, the boy draws him into a window recess and says in a hurried whisper: “Tell my father I love him tremendously!”
What must be the tenor of Napoleon’s thoughts when he hears gossip about a certain Neipperg, an Austrian officer, a man of no account, and one whose only way into history is through the bedroom of a Habsburg princess—who would herself never have been heard of had it not been for her marriage to Napoleon. Thus terrible are the blows of fate, and his intimates think it natural enough when they see their master weeping over his boy’s portrait.
But now Pauline arrives, fascinating as ever, in the best of spirits. To amuse him, she mimics the grimaces that are made by the worthies of the island and their wives when, at the weekly receptions, the Emperor asks them how many children they have, and whether they think he ought to build a hospital. As the year draws on, Italians from the mainland come in increasing numbers. Persons with satisfactory recommendations—historians, poets, men of birth, and even Englishmen—secure a good reception; and he will talk to them for hours, though only of the past, with never a word about the future. He is delighted to hear such visitors rail at the Austrian regime which has now been set up once more, but he will pay no heed to conspirators who wish him to come to Italy as leader of a revolt. His thoughts range towards the other coast, and by slow degrees mature into plans.
What is Paris saying?
To him this is still the question of questions. The news brought to him in the journals twice a week, and the information he gleans from his visitors, lead him to turn new possibilities over in his mind. But it must not be supposed that Napoleon began the new epoch with a definite plan. When he landed in Elba, it was an open question in his mind whether he would ever quit the island. Still, the thought of future possibilities was intensified in him by the usual forebodings of an adventurer—the adventurer he had become since the failure at Moscow. “A living drummer is better than a dead emperor.” Slowly, as the conditions change, he makes plans and rejects them, renews and modifies his designs. They turn upon what is happening in Paris and in Vienna.
What is Paris saying about the Bourbons? Hardly is Napoleon away, when they make their “entry” after the usual manner of exiled kings who return; and though the newspapers, under duress of the censorship the Emperor had established, lie like troopers, in his remote island he can learn the ridiculous truth. Four persons are sitting in a small carriage. The Parisians, whose risibilities are easily touched, certainly have something to laugh at. The king is there, in an amazing rig-out, in plain clothes, but decked with gigantic epaulettes; a man so fat that he has three chins; and he smiles at the gaping crowd. Beside him is the duchess of Angoulème, her face tearful with reminiscence. On the opposite seat are the prince of Condé, a very old man, and the duke of Bourbon; they wear the uniforms of the good old days, which none of the younger onlookers have ever seen before. This carriage, freighted with the resurrected ghosts of those who had been laid to rest twenty-two years ago, was attended by Emperor Napoleon’s sulky-looking guard, men whose uniforms, shot and slashed, bore witness to the titanic struggles that had been waged in the interim.
The Emperor makes eager enquiries concerning the habits of his successor on the throne, and is gratified to learn that Louis has taken over his room without making any changes. The king’s demeanour is said to be far from regal. According to a German description of this date, Louis was “extremely obese, so fat that he can hardly walk. Wearing black satin boots, he is supported on each side, and would stumble over a straw. He is clad in a sort of blue soutane with a turn-over red collar and hanging golden epaulettes of an antique pattern.” This sort of thing keeps the Emperor amused for a whole hour. For a dozen years, England has been publishing caricatures depicting Napoleon’s camp manners in the palace of the Bourbons, and now this legitimate ruler, set up by England, is a veritable caricature of a monarch. What is Louis doing to show his good will towards the people?
He has granted a constitution? But soon comes news that this gracious gift exists only on paper. The old inequalities, the privileges of caste, which had cost the present king’s brother his head, are quietly stealing in through the back door. The nobles are not liable to military service, and men of humble birth have no chance of rising to high office. The new nobility is made a mock of. King Louis, a good old man, reasonable enough, is led by his brother, the gloomy count of Artois. Around the latter are concentrated the vengeful émigrés, who are demanding the return of their property; but the law guarantees the rights of the actual holders. The king, therefore, gives peerages and large pensions to the émigrés.
What is this? So the clergy is rising to power once more! The priests are on the side of the old nobility, and by threats of hell-fire induce the dying to execute wills in favour of the sometime owners of confiscated property. On Sundays, though the new constitution guarantees religious freedom, all business is suspended under threat of punishment. Religious processions again make their way through the streets. But there is a reaction against ecclesiasticism. When Christian burial is refused to an actress who has lived a gay life and is the darling of the Parisians, there is a riot, the first under the restored regime.
People are beginning to see how much they owed to their foreign liberator. With intense delight, the exile contemplates a caricature showing Louis riding pillion behind a Cossack, making his way into France over French corpses. When Wellington, the conqueror of Spain, comes to Paris as British ambassador, he meets angry glances when he walks the streets. What is the new regime doing for the thousands who may no longer remain soldiers? The officers are put on half-pay, and those who are not practising Catholics are cashiered. A new royal guard, consisting of gentlemen of noble birth, is richly endowed; the nobles’ military academy is reopened; but the schools for the orphans of members of the Legion of Honour are done away with. Disillusionment spreads through France more quickly than the Emperor had expected.
But the tone in Elba is not Jacobin. Napoleon does not abandon his system, although he recognises his mistakes: “France needs an aristocracy. For its foundation, however, time and memories are requisite. I made princes and dukes, and gave them land and wealth; but they were men of low birth, so it was impossible to make noblemen of them. I tried, therefore, to unite them by marriage with old families. Had I been granted the twenty years I wanted for the establishment of France’s greatness, I could have done much. Fate willed otherwise.”
On the whole, like a chessplayer when the game is finished, he frankly acknowledges the wrong moves that have led to his defeat. Nor is he cautious in the choice of persons to whom he pours out such confessions. He tells English visitors that he ought to have made peace after Dresden. But when they ask why he did not make peace in Châtillon, he answers proudly:
“I could not make a peace dishonourable to France. Belgium was part of France when I rose to power. Could I cede the lands I had conquered, and go back to the Bourbon frontiers? Never!... I am a born soldier. Suddenly, I found myself in the midst of the revolution. The throne was vacant. I took it, and kept it as long as I could. Now I am once more what I was to begin with, a soldier....”
Those who know the man will recognise from such thoughts that he is still unbroken. But what amazes us is the freedom with which he speaks of the past. Never, in Elba, does he show any desire to falsify his history. And yet, during the first months, he believes his career finished, and has no thought of trying a new coup de main. He even fancies that he would like to become a justice of the peace in England. “What would happen to me if I went to England? Would people throw stones at me? The London mob is a dangerous factor.” The Englishmen to whom he thus talks assure him that their country is hospitable. He makes a mental note of this assurance.
The Vienna congress is the first thing to set him in motion. Four monarchs, allied against one republic, were at length able, after a decade, to annihilate it; five monarchs, now all united, had assembled to reorganise Europe, and there was no longer an enemy worth considering to hold them in check; but four and a half conquerors (if the Bourbon ruler can be accounted as half) were soon to be disunited, thanks to the inborn jealousy with which each one of them regarded his fellows. Does the tsar want to take the whole of Poland as his share of the spoil; and does Prussia want Saxony? What will happen, then, to Galicia; and what about the worthy king of Saxony, Bourbon’s ally? A split is inevitable. By New Year, three months after the opening of the congress, the coalition has been broken up. Ministers and potentates who had so recently been celebrating their victory in a series of festivities, have begun to cheat one another. The Habsburg ruler is now allied with England and France against the Russians and the Prussians, by whose side the Austrians had a few months earlier been fighting against Napoleon.
Metternich’s levity, laziness, vanity, intriguing disposition (this is Stein’s description), dominated the situation: “he twists our excellent and victorious monarchs round his fingers.” A Saxon nobleman writes from Vienna: “The king of Prussia is the embodiment of wrath.... The king of Denmark is ... well-meaning and sometimes intelligent. The king of Bavaria looks like an uncouth and morose wagoner. The grand duke of Baden is huge, gloomy, vain, and robust.... The old duke of Weimar lives as jovially as ever he did.” The hopes of the man of Elba rise as he reads and hears all this. “My time will come,” he thinks, “when the congress goes up in the air!” Henceforward, he is in receipt of secret information concerning the currents of opinion in Vienna. The faithful Maret is able to arrange an intelligence service. But while the congress, a brightly lit pleasure ship, rolling for lack of ballast, is intriguing and enjoying itself, in the crow’s nest sits Napoleon’s old enemy, keeping anxious watch. He has his spies in Leghorn, who report every ship that sails to Elba, and tell him the names of the passengers.
Thus do the old adversaries eye one another across mountains and seas and across the documents of the diplomats, until it seems as if all these people of importance had come together in Vienna to furnish a lively setting for the game of chess the two experts are playing. Does either of them recall that night just before the Eighteenth Brumaire, when they had been scared by the clatter of hoofs from the mounted patrol, and had turned pale in their dread of arrest?
This much is certain, that at Vienna Talleyrand remains a shrewd judge of men. Regarding Murat as a dangerous personality, he would like to have the king of Naples shipped off to the Azores, nearly a thousand miles from the nearest continent. But his ruling passion, avarice, comes in the way. At the congress, Murat, driven into a corner in the defence of his kingdom, promises Talleyrand a large sum of money in return for the minister’s princedom of Benevento. Talleyrand therefore drops the plan against Murat, and concocts a new scheme. The Emperor is to be kidnapped. But the spies in Leghorn report that this will only be possible if one of the four captains who command his ships can be suborned.
When Napoleon gets wind of these intrigues, the adventurer’s blood of his Corsican home runs swiftly through his veins. He has the defences of Elba strengthened, and his artillerymen are trained in the use of hand-grenades. “I am a soldier, and am ready to face a firing squad. But I will not be deported! Before they can do that they will have to take my citadel by storm.” No attempt is made. In Vienna there is now a better understanding, and the likelihood of the rupture of negotiations diminishes. In France, however, disaffection to the Bourbons is growing. The general upshot is to stimulate the Emperor’s determination. His thoughts run as follows:
“If the congress closes with a peace festival after all the documents have been signed, the phalanx will have been reconstituted. But now, when it is still imperfectly consolidated, a touch will break it to pieces. France is murmuring against the Bourbons; Paris makes fun of them; every one detests the allies. There are a hundred signs to show that the old army is devoted to me—the Emperor. The Bourbons are fainthearts, and will run away. As soon as I regain my position, my son and heir will be sent back to me.”
Calculations, only calculations; and never has he reckoned more soberly. None the less, though he considers his figures with the utmost care, in the last resort he relies upon psychological reactions. “I count upon taking them by surprise. A bold deed upsets people’s equanimity, and they are dumbfounded by a great novelty.” He adds: “I am the cause of France’s unhappiness. I must effect a cure.” In the end of February, he sends for his treasurer. “Have you plenty of money? How much does a million in gold weigh? What is the weight of a hundred francs? How much does a box filled with books weigh?... Take a couple of packing cases, put all the gold coin you have at the bottom, and fill up the case with my books; my valet will give them to you. Discharge the present staff of servants; pack their trunks and pay them off. Everything must be kept strictly secret.”
In alarm, the man hastens to General Drouot. They exchange glances, but keep their own counsel. Next day, Napoleon orders that no ships are to leave the harbour. Everything has been quietly prepared; an expedition like that to Egypt, but on a small scale.
On the eve of his departure, he plays a game of écarté with the ladies; but he soon leaves the table and goes into the garden, whence he does not return. His mother, according to her own story, finds him sitting under a fig tree. After brief hesitation, he lays his hand on her forehead, and says, much moved:
“I will tell you all about it. No one else must know, not even Pauline.”
Then he goes back to his old tone, as if he were talking to Berthier:
“I must tell you that I am leaving next evening.”
“Where are you going?”
“To Paris.” A pause. “I should like your advice.”
The mother’s heart stops beating for a moment. How she has enjoyed the last six months; the period of quiet intercourse with her son. An end to the tranquillity and the security! But Letizia is a proud woman and a clever one. She knows that nobody can hold him back when he has made up his mind, and that the only effect of anxious dissuasion will be to disturb his composure. She says:
“Follow your destiny. It cannot be God’s will that you are to die from poison, or after an inactive old age; though it may well be his will that you are to die sword in hand. Let us put our trust in Mother Mary.”
On the last evening, the authorities are summoned by their sovereign. He announces his imminent departure. “I have been extraordinarily well pleased here. As a sign of confidence, I am leaving my mother and my sister. To your care, too, I entrust this country, to which I attach great importance.” The governor and the mayor express their lively regret. The tone befits the departure of a distinguished guest, who has been spending a few months in a lovely island for the benefit of his health, and is sorry that the time has come for his return home.
He goes on board, and at dawn seven little frigates, carrying a thousand men and a few guns, set sail for the French coast. He stands on the deck. The outlines of Elba, where he has lived so peacefully, and of Corsica, where many years before he had made stormy attempts to force his way upwards, fade into the distance. Slowly the coast of the French Riviera begins to show clearly through the mists of the first day of March. Let us look into the Emperor’s mind:
“What is the minimum? Defeat and death. What is the maximum? Europe? No use thinking any more about Europe! The dream of the United States of Europe is finished. I cannot get another million Frenchmen, and the foreign nations are not ready for my scheme. I must give France a constitution, and must accommodate myself to governing through Chambers. The time for dictatorships is over. Besides, we are not in Paris yet. What will the army do?”
His thoughts are coloured with the spirit of the time. He is a man of forty-five, with more past than future; no longer young enough to take the world by storm, but not too old for a desperate venture. Thus does Napoleon again draw near to French shores, in a mood betwixt courage and renunciation.