Recollections of Napoleon at St. Helena/Chapter 4

NAPOLEON'S HABITS DURING HIS STAY AT THE BRIARS.—MISS LEGG, HER TERROR OF THE EMPEROR.—NAPOLEON ATTACKED BY A COW.—THE ROOM OCCUPIED BY HIM.—HIS SIMPLE MODE OF LIVING.—CARICATURE OF A FRENCHMAN.—MY INDIGNATION AT BEING QUIZZED ABOUT COUNT LAS CASES' SON.

It is not in my power to give a detailed account of the events of each day the emperor spent with us. I shall never cease regretting that I did not keep a journal of all that occurred, but I was too young and too thoughtless to see the advantage of doing so; besides, I trusted to a memory ​naturally most retentive, thinking it would enable me at any time to recall the minutest incident concerning Napoleon. In this I have deceived myself. My life has been a chequered and a melancholy one, and many of its incidents have been of a nature to absorb the mind and abstract the attention from every thing but the consideration of present misery. This, continued for a length of time, has erased things from my recollection which I thought I never could have forgotten, but of which I now retain nothing but the consciousness that they took place, and the regret that I am unable to record them.

Many of the circumstances I am about to relate, however, I did write down shortly after they occurred, and the others have been kept fresh in my memory by being repeated to friends; so that the reader of my little volume may depend on the absolute truth and fidelity of my narrative, a consideration, indeed, to which I have ​thought it right to sacrifice many others. I do not, then, profess to give a journal of what Napoleon daily said and did at the Briars; but the occurrences related I have inserted as nearly as possible in the order in which they took place.

The emperor's habits, during the time he stayed with us, were very simple and regular. His usual hour for getting up was eight, and be seldom took any thing but a cup of coffee until one, when he breakfasted, or rather lunched; he dined at nine, and retired about eleven to his own rooms. His manner was so unaffectedly kind and amiable, that in a few days I felt perfectly at ease in his society, and looked upon him more as a companion of my own age, than as the mighty warrior at whose name "the world grew pale."

His spirits were very good, and he was at times almost boyish in his love of mirth and glee, not unmixed sometimes with a tinge of malice.

​Shortly after his arrival, a little girl, Miss Legg, the daughter of a friend, came to visit us at the Briars. The poor child had heard such terrific stories of Bonaparte, that when I told her he was coming up the lawn, she clung to me in an agony of terror. Forgetting my own former fears, I was cruel enough to run out and tell Napoleon of the child's fright, begging him to come into the house. He walked. up to her, and, brushing up his hair with his hand, shook his head, making horrible faces, and giving a sort of savage howl. The little girl screamed so violently, that mamma was afraid she would go into hysterics, and took her out of the room. Napoleon laughed a good deal at the idea of his being such a bugbear, and would hardly believe me when I told him that I had stood in the same dismay of him. When I made this confession, he tried to frighten me as he had poor little Miss Legg, by brushing up his hair, and distort​ing his features; but he looked more grotesque than horrible, and I only laughed at him. He then (as a last resource) tried the howl, but was equally unsuccessful, and seemed, I thought, a little provoked that he could not frighten me. He said the howl was Cossack, and it certainly was barbarous enough for any thing.

He took a good deal of exercise at this period, and was fond of taking exploring walks in the valley and adjacent mountain. One evening he strolled out, accompanied by General Gourgaud, my sister, and myself, into a meadow in which some cows were grazing. One of these, the moment she saw our party, put her head down and (I believe) her tail up, and advanced à pas de charge against the emperor. He made a skilful and rapid retreat, and leaping nimbly over a wall, placed this rampart between himself and the enemy. But General Gourgaud valiantly stood his ground, and, drawing his sword, threw ​himself between his sovereign and the cow, exclaiming, "This is the second time I have saved the emperor's life." Napoleon laughed heartily when he heard the General's boast, and said, "He ought to have put himself in the position to repel cavalry." I told him the cow appeared tranquillized, and stopped the moment he disappeared, and he continued to laugh, and said, "She wished to save the English government the expense and trouble of keeping him."

The emperor, during his residence under my father's roof, occupied only one room and a marquee; the room was one my father had built for a ball-room. There was a small lawn in front, railed round, and in this railing the marquee was pitched, connected with the house by a covered way. The marquee was divided into two compartments, the inner one forming Napoleon's bedroom, and at one ​extremity of the external compartment there was a small tent bed, with green silk hangings, on which General Gourgaud slept. It was the bedstead used by the emperor in all his campaigns. Between the two divisions of the tent was a crown, which his devoted servants had carved out of the turf floor, and it was so placed, that the emperor could not pass through, without placing his foot on this emblem of royal dignity.

Napoleon seemed to have no penchant for the pleasures of the table. He lived very simply, and cared little or nothing about what he ate. He dined at nine, and at that hour Cipriani, the maître d'hótel, made his appearance, and with a profound reverence said, in a solemn tone, "Le dîner de votre Majesté est servi." He then retreated backwards, followed by Napoleon and those of his suite who were to dine with him. When he had ​finished, he would abruptly push away his chair from the table, and quit the dining-room, apparently glad it was over.

A few days after his arrival, he invited my sister and myself to dine with him, aud began quizzing the English for their fondness for rosbif and plum pudding. I accused the French, in return, of living on frogs; and, running into the house, I brought him a caricature of a long, lean Frenchman, with his mouth open, his tongue out, and a frog on the tip of it, ready to jump down his throat: underneath was written, "A Frenchman's dinner!" He laughed at my impertinence, and pinched my ear, as he often did when he was amused, and sometimes when a little provoked at my "espièglerie."

"Le petit Las Cases," as he called Count Las Cases' son, formed one of the party on that day. He was then a lad of fourteen, and the emperor was fond of quizzing me about him, and telling me I should ​be his wife. Nothing enraged me so much; I could not bear to be considered such a child, and particularly at that moment, for there was a ball in prospect, to which I had great hopes papa would allow me to go, and I knew that his objection would be founded on my being too young. Napoleon, seeing my annoyance, desired young Las Cases to kiss me, and he held both my hands whilst the little page saluted me. I did all in my power to escape, but in vain. The moment, however, that my hands were at liberty, I boxed le petit Las Cases' ears most thoroughly. But I determined to be revenged on Napoleon. and in descending to the cottage to play whist, an opportunity presented itself which I did not allow to escape. There was no internal communication between the part occupied by the emperor and the rest of the house, and the path leading down was very steep and very narrow. There being barely room for one person to pass at a time, ​Napoleon walked first, Las Cases next, then his son, and, lastly, my sister Jane. I allowed the party to proceed very quietly until I was left about ten yards behind; and then I ran with all my force on my sister Jane,—she fell with extended hands on the little page, he was thrown upon his father, and the grand chamberlain, to his dismay, was pushed against the emperor, who, although the shock was somewhat diminished by the time it reached him, had still some difficulty, from the steepness of the path, in preserving his footing. I was in ecstasies at the confusion I had created, and exulted in the revenge I had taken for the kiss; but I was soon obliged to change my note of triumph. Las Cases was thunderstruck at the insult offered to the emperor, and became perfectly furious at my uncontrollable laughter. He seized me by the shoulders, and pushed me violently on the rocky bank. It was now my turn to be enraged. I burst into tears of ​passion, and, turning to Napoleon, cried out, "Oh! sir, he has hurt me." "Never mind," replied the emperor, "ne pleurs pas—I will hold him while you punish him." And a good punishing he got: I boxed the little man's ears until he begged for mercy; but I would show him none; and at length Napoleon let him go, telling him to run, and that if he could not run faster than I, he deserved to be beaten again. He immediately started off as fast as he could, and I after him, Napoleon clapping his hands and laughing immoderately at our race round the lawn. Las Cases never liked me after this adventure, and used to call me a rude hoyden.