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

which every thing of this sort slides, without penetrating. It would cost me too dear to play the gallant.”

      On this subject, an anecdote was related in the saloon of Josephine. It was said that the Queen of Prussia one day had a beautiful rose in her hand, which the Emperor asked her to give to him. The Queen hesitated for a few moments, and then presented it to him, saying: “Why should I so readily grant what you request, while you remain deaf to all my entreaties?” She alluded to the fortress of Magdeburg, which she had earnestly solicited him to give up. Such was the nature of the intimacy, and such the conversations, that were so unblushingly misrepresented in English works of a certain degree of merit, where the Emperor was described as an insolent and brutal tyrant, seeking, with the aid of his ferocious Mamelukes, to violate the honour of the lovely Queen, before the very face of her unfortunate husband.

      As to the grand machinery of spies and police, which has been so much talked of, what state on the Continent could boast of having less of such evils than France; and yet what country stood more in need of them? What circumstances more imperatively called for them? Every pamphlet published in Europe was directed against France, with a view of rendering odious in another country that which it was thought advisable to conceal at home. Still, however, these measures, so necessary in principle, though doubtless hateful in their details, were looked at merely in a general way by the Emperor, and always with a strict observance of his constant maxim, that nothing should be done that is not absolutely indispensable. In the Council of State, I have frequently heard him make enquiries into these subjects; investigate them with peculiar solicitude; correct abuses and seek to obviate evils, and appoint committees of his Council to visit the prisons, and make reports to him. Having been myself employed in a mission of this nature, I had an opportunity of observing the misconduct and abuses of subaltern agents; and, at the same time, of knowing the ardent wishes of the sovereign to repress them.

      The Emperor found that this branch of the administration in a certain degree clashed with established prejudices and opinions; and he therefore wished to elevate it in the eyes of the people, by placing it under the control of a man whose character was beyond the reach of censure. In the year 1810, he summoned the Councillor of State, Baron ——, to Fontainebleau. The Baron had been an emigrant, or what nearly amounted to the same thing. His family, his early education, his former opinions,—all were calculated to render him an object of suspicion to one more distrustful than Napoleon. In the course of conversation, the Emperor said:—“If the Count de Lille were now to discover himself in Paris, and you were intrusted with the superintendence of the police, would you arrest him?”—“Yes, certainly,” answered the Councillor of State, “because he would thereby have broken his ban, and because his appearance would be in opposition to every existing law.”—“If you were one of a committee appointed to try him, would you condemn him?”—“Yes, doubtless; for the laws which I have sworn to obey would require that I should condemn him.”—“Very well!” said the Emperor, “return to Paris: I make you my prefect of police.”

      With regard to the inspection of letters under the government of Napoleon, whatever may have been publicly said on that subject, the Emperor declared that certainly very few letters were read at the post-offices. Those which were delivered either open or re-sealed, to private persons, had, for the most part, not been read: to read all would have been an endless task. The system of examining letters was adopted with the view of preventing, rather than discovering, dangerous correspondence. The letters that were really read exhibited no trace of having been opened, so effectual were the precautions employed. “Ever since the reign of Louis XIV.,” said the Emperor, “there had existed an office of political police for discovering foreign correspondence: and from that period the same families had managed the business of the office, though the individuals and their functions were alike unknown. It was in all respects an official post. The persons superintending this department were educated at great expense in the different capitals of Europe. They had their own peculiar notions of propriety, and always manifested reluctance to examine the home correspondence: it was, however, also under their control. As soon as the name of any individual was entered upon the lists of this important department, his arms and seals were immediately engraved at the office; and thus his letters, after having been read, were closed up and delivered without any mark of suspicion. These circumstances, joined to the serious evils which they might create, and the important results which they were capable of producing, constituted the vast responsibility of the office of postmaster-general, and required that it should be filled by a man of prudence, judgment, and intelligence.” The Emperor bestowed great praise on M. de Lavalette, for the way in which he had discharged his duties.

      The Emperor was by no means favourable to the system of inspecting correspondence. With regard to the diplomatic information thereby obtained, he did not consider it of sufficient value to counterbalance the expenses incurred; for the establishment cost 600,000 francs. As to the examination of the letters of citizens, he regarded that as a measure calculated to do more harm than good. “It is rarely,” said he, “that conspiracy is carried on through such channels; and with respect to the individual opinions obtained from epistolary correspondence, they may be more dangerous than useful to a sovereign, particularly among such a people as the French. Of whom will not our national volatility and fickleness lead us to complain? The man whom I may have offended at my levee will write to-day that I am a tyrant, though but yesterday he overwhelmed me with praises, and perhaps to-morrow will be ready to lay down his life to serve me. The violation of the privacy of correspondence may, therefore, cause a prince to lose his best friends, by wrongfully inspiring him with distrust and prejudice towards all; particularly as enemies capable of mischief are always sufficiently artful to avoid exposing themselves to that kind of danger. Some of my ministers were so cautious, in this respect, that I could never succeed in detecting one of their letters.”

      I think I have already mentioned that, on the Emperor’s return from Elba, there were found in M. De Blacas’ apartments in the Tuileries, numerous petitions and letters, in which Napoleon was spoken of most indecorously. He caused them to be burnt. “They would have formed a most odious collection,” said the Emperor. “For a moment I entertained the idea of inserting some of them in the Moniteur. They would have disgraced certain individuals; but they would have afforded no new lesson on the human heart: men are always the same!”

      The Emperor was far from knowing all the measures taken by the police in his name, with respect to writings and individuals; he had neither time nor opportunity to enquire into them. He now daily learns from us, or from pamphlets that happen to fall in his way, the arrests of individuals, or the suppression of works, of which he had never before heard.

      In alluding to the works that had been suppressed by the police during his reign, the Emperor observed that, having plenty of leisure-time during his residence at Elba, he amused himself with glancing over some of these works, and that he was frequently unable to conceive the motives which had induced the police to suppress them.

      He then proceeded to converse on the subject of the liberty and restriction of the press. This, he said, was an interminable question, and admitted of no medium. The grand difficulty, he observed, did not lie in the principle itself, but in the treatment of the accused party, or the circumstances under which it might be necessary to apply the principle taken in an abstract sense. The Emperor would have been favourable to unlimited liberty. In all our conversations at St. Helena, he constantly treated every great question in the same point of view and with the same arguments. Thus Napoleon truly was, and must remain in the eyes of posterity, the type, the standard, and the prince of liberal opinions; they belonged to his heart, to his principles, and to his mind. If his actions sometimes seemed to be at variance with these ideas, it was when he was imperatively swayed by circumstances. This is proved by the following fact, to which I now attach more importance than I did when it first came to my knowledge.

      In one of the evening-parties at the Tuileries, Napoleon, conversing aside with three or four individuals of the Court, who were grouped around him, closed a discussion on a great political question with the following remarkable words:—“For my part, I am fundamentally and naturally favourable to a fixed and moderate government.” And, observing that the countenance of one of the interlocutors expressed surprise, “You don’t believe me!” continued he; “why not? Is it because my deeds do not seem