On the Coronation, &C.—Decrees of Berlin and Milan.—The Grand Cause of the Hatred of the English

25th.—The weather has become fine in every respect. The Emperor breakfasted in the tent and sent for us all. The conversation turned upon the ceremonies of the coronation. He asked for particulars from one of us, who had been present, but was unable to satisfy him. He made the same inquiries of another, but the latter had not seen it. “Where were you then at that time?” asked the Emperor.—“At Paris, Sire.”—“How then! you did not see the coronation!”—“No Sire.” The Emperor, then casting a side glance at him, and taking him by the ear, said; “Were you so absurd as to carry your aristocracy to that point?”—“But, Sire, my hour was not come.”—“But at least you saw the retinue?”—“Ah! Sire, had my curiosity prevailed, I should have hastened to witness what was most worthy and most interesting to be seen. I had, however, a ticket of admission, and I preferred presenting it to the English lady whom I lately mentioned to your Majesty, and who, by way of parenthesis, caught a cold there, that nearly killed her. For my own part I remained quietly at home.”—“Ah, that is too much for me to put up with,” said the Emperor, “the villanous aristocrat! How! And you were really guilty of such an absurdity?”—“Alas! I was,” replied the accused, “and yet here I am near you, and at St. Helena.” The Emperor smiled, and let go the ear.

After breakfast, a captain of the English artillery, who had been six years at the Isle of France, called upon me. He was to sail for Europe the next day. He entreated me in a thousand ways to procure him the happiness of seeing the Emperor. He would, he said, give all he had in the world for such a favour; his gratitude would be boundless, &c.

We conversed together for a long time; the Emperor was taking his round in the calash. On his return, I was fortunate enough to fulfil the English officer’s wishes. The Emperor received him for upwards of a quarter of an hour; his joy was extreme, as he was aware that the favour became every day more rare. Every thing about the Emperor had struck him, he declared, in a most extraordinary manner; his features, his affability, the sound of his voice, his expressions, the questions he had asked; he was, he exclaimed, a hero, a god!...

The weather was delightful. The Emperor continued to walk in the garden in the midst of us. He discussed the failure of a negotiation undertaken by one of us; a business which the Emperor had judged very easy, but which turned out to be of the most delicate nature for the person entrusted with it. The object of it was to prevail upon some English officers to publish a certain paper in England.

The Emperor expressed his disapprobation of the failure in his usual mode of reasoning, and with the intelligence and point that are familiar to him: he was, however, very much disappointed at it: his observations were rather strong; he pushed them to a degree of ill humour of which the person he found fault with had never, perhaps, before, received any proofs. At length, he concluded with saying: “After all, Sir, would you not have accepted yourself what you proposed to others, had you been in their place?”—“No, Sire.”—“Why not? Well then,” he added, in a tone of reproof, “you should not be my Minister of Police.” “And your Majesty would be in the right,” quickly replied the other, who felt himself vexed in his turn; “I feel no inclination whatever for such an office.” The Emperor, seeing him enter the saloon, a little before dinner, said: “Ah! there is our little Officer of Police! Come, approach, my little Officer of Police;” and he pinched his ear. Although hours had passed since the warm conversation took place, the Emperor recollected it; he knew that the person who had been the subject of it was full of sensibility, and it was evident that he wished to efface the impression it had made upon him. These are characteristic shades, and those which arise from the most trifling causes are the most natural and the most marked.

After dinner, the Emperor was led, by the turn which the conversation took, to review the special subject of his maritime quarrel with England. “Her pretensions to blockade on paper,” he observed, “produced my famous Berlin decree. The British council, in a fit of resentment, issued its orders; it established a right of toll on the seas. I instantly replied by the celebrated Milan decrees, which denationalized every flag that submitted to the English acts; and it was then that the war became, in England truly personal. Every one connected with trade was enraged against me. England was exasperated at a struggle and energy, of which she had no example. She had uniformly found those who had preceded me more complaisant.”

The Emperor explained, on a later occasion, the means, by which he had forced the Americans to make war against the English. He had, he said, discovered the way of connecting their interests with their rights; for people, he remarked, fight much more readily for the former than for the latter.

At present, the Emperor expected, he said, some approaching attempt, on the part of the English, on the sovereignty of the seas, for the establishment of the right of universal toll, &c. “It is,” said he, “one of the principal resources left them for discharging their debts, for extricating themselves from the abyss into which they are plunged; in a word, for getting rid of their embarrassments. If they have among them an enterprising genius, a man of a strong intellect, they will certainly undertake something of that kind. Nobody is powerful enough to oppose it, and they set up their claim with a sort of justice. They may plead, in its justification, that it was for the safety of Europe they involved themselves in difficulties; that they succeeded, and that they are entitled to some compensation. And then, the only ships of war in Europe are theirs. They reign, in fact, at present, over the seas. There is an end to existence of public rights when the ballance is the broken, &c., &c.

“The English may now be omnipotent, if they will but confine themselves to their navy. But they will endanger their superiority, complicate their affairs, and insensibly lose their importance, if they persevere in keeping soldiers on the continent.”