Resources During the Emigration: Anecdotes, &C.—Official Communications.—New Offences

4th. At about twelve o’clock, I went to the Emperor’s apartment. He took a good lesson of English in Telemachus: he resolved to take up my method again; he approves of it, he said, and derives great benefit from it. He observed that he thought I had excellent dispositions for being a very good schoolmaster; I told him it was the fruit of my experience. He then made me enter into a great many details respecting the time when I gave lessons in London, during my emigration, and he was very much amused by them. “However,” said he, “you gentlemen, must have done credit to the profession, if not by your learning, at least, by your manners.” I then told him that one of our Princes had taught mathematics during his emigration. “And this alone,” said he, with animation, “would make a man of him, and shew him to have possessed some merit; that is assuredly one of the greatest triumphs of Madame de Genlis.”

I then related to him the following curious anecdote, which I had heard on that subject. “The Prince was in Switzerland: and, being so circumstanced as to find it advisable to conceal his existence, he wished to take a name that might favour his disguise. One of our Bishops, from the South of France, fancied that nothing could be better than to give him the name of a young man from Languedoc then at Nismes, who was a very zealous Protestant; which was just as it ought to be, the Prince being in a Protestant canton. The Bishop added that there was no appearance that the young man would ever be in the way to falsify the Prince’s assumption of his name. But it had so happened that the young man had gone into the army, and had become an aide-de-camp to M. de Montesquiou, and that shortly afterwards he had emigrated precisely into Switzerland with his general. What was his surprise to find himself at the table d’hôte, at dinner with a person of his own name, of the same religion, and who belonged to the same town! It was exactly like the scene of the two Sosias. But the best of the joke was that the young man had also changed his name, and carefully concealed his own. Such incidents are only to be met with in novels; they are thought of impossible occurrence. Perhaps the present story has been rather embellished; yet, I think, I can affirm that I heard it from the young man himself.”

“But,” observed the Emperor afterwards, “those amongst you emigrants who had created for yourselves resources abroad must have felt quite lost when you returned to France, and ruined once more?”—“Certainly, Sire; for we found nothing of what we had formerly left in France, and we had just abandoned the little we had made ourselves. But we had not calculated: our impatience to revisit our native land had over-balanced every other consideration, and several amongst us soon found themselves in the greatest distress, in want of every thing, although acquainted and even intimate with many of the great personages of the day—with your Ministers, Sire, your Councillors of State, and others. This circumstance gave rise to a bon mot from one of our wits. Meeting one day, in the saloon of the Minister for Maritime Affairs, a friend who like himself hardly knew how to manage to subsist, he exclaimed, by way of consolation: “Well, my friend, if we die of hunger, we may still have two or three Ministers at our funeral.” The Emperor laughed heartily at the jest, and admitted that it gave an exact description of the situation of affairs at the time.

After his lesson of English, and the conversation which followed, the Emperor went out for a walk. We walked to the end of the wood, where the calash drove up to us.

On the Emperor’s return, the Doctor came to inform him that Colonel Reade, whom he had consented to receive instead of the Governor, wished to be presented to him. Colonel Reade delivered to the Emperor a note of considerable length; and I was sent for to translate it. It contained the communications which Sir Hudson Lowe had for three or four days past been vainly endeavouring to make in person. The note was couched in the most offensive terms, and the Governor wished to have reserved to himself the satisfaction of communicating its contents to the Emperor. This is a characteristic trait, and it requires no comment. The harsh terms in which it was expressed, and in particular the repeated threat that we should be separated from the Emperor, vexed us exceedingly, and put us out of spirits for the remainder of the day.