Interview of Napoleon and Benjamin Constant,

d'Artois, the pretended plots of the Orleans faction.

This was

all that Fouché wished; for he had at Ghent confidential agents enough between himself and the princes, and he well knew that M. de Vitrolles would not fail, in his correspondence with the Count d'Artois, to enhance the dangers to be apprehended from the Orleanist party and the merit of Fouché. M. de Vitrolles merely requested the minister to answer to him for his liberty and his head, should he remain in Paris.

"Your head!” replied Fouché, with a smile; "how can I guarantee that to you when I am not sure of my own? All I can do is to promise you that they shall both fall together!" M. de Vitrolles, a man eminently calculated for double confidences and secret diplomacies, received from Fouché numerous passports for Ghent, to be used by his agents, and an invitation to visit the minister every day to discuss with him the interests of the King.

XIII

Before he departed for the head-quarters of the allied sovereigns, Benjamin Constant went to take leave of the Emperor. This negociator having asked him in what part of the globe he meant to choose an asylum to finish his days removed from the throne, "I have not yet decided," replied the Emperor, in a tone of indifference to his own fate. Flight I disdain; and, moreover, why should I not remain where I am? What can the allied powers do to a disarmed man? I shall live in this retreat with a few friends who will continue attached not to my power but to my person."

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He amused himself with anticipating the nature of this private life, so peaceable and free from care, as if past grandeur was unheeded, and he could descend at a single step from the throne to a private station.

"If they do not choose to leave me here,” he said, “where would they like me to go? To England? But there my residence would be either ridiculous or disquieting. No one would believe that I could be tranquil there. Every mist would be suspected of bringing me to your coast; I should

Napoleon's opinion of the Chambers.

be put out of the pale of the law; I should compromise all my friends; and by dint of saying, 'There he is come at last,' I should at length be tempted to come in earnest. America would be more suitable. I could live there with dignity; but, after all, what have I to apprehend in staying where I am? What sovereign could persecute me without dishonouring himself? To one of them I have returned the half of his conquered states, and how many times has the other pressed my hand, felicitating himself on being the friend. of a great man ! I shall see, however. I do not wish to struggle against open force. I arrived at Paris to combine our last resources-I have been abandoned with the same facility that I was received! Well, let them efface, if possible, this double stain of weakness and frivolity! They should at least cover it with some struggle, some glory! Let them do for their country what they will no longer do for me! But I do not hope it," he added, with an incredulous accent. "They give me up to-day," they say, "to save France, but to-morrow they will give up France to save their own heads!"

XIV

Another of his visitors having congratulated him on the departure of the plenipotentiaries commissioned to present to the allied powers the recognition of his dynasty as the ultimatum of France: "No," he replied, "the allies are too much interested in imposing the Bourbons upon you to give my son the crown! The names of the plenipotentiaries belie their instructions. Lafayette, Pontécoulant, and Sebastiani are my enemies; they have conspired against me; the enemies of the father cannot be the friends of the son! Moreover, the Chambers obey the wishes of Fouché. If they had given to me what they have lavished upon him I should have saved France. My presence alone at the head of the army would have done more than all your negociations!" He forgot that he had himself quitted that army, where, by his presence, he might, in fact, still have fought or negociated. "I alone," he incessantly repeated, "could retrieve all; but

Caulaincourt advises his escape to America.

your plotters would rather bury themselves in the gulf than save themselves with me."

These plotters, however, were all men who had issued from the 20th March as his ministers, his marshals, his generals, his partisans, who had sacrificed with him and for But ambition never deems him the last army of France. itself sufficiently served unless the country itself is offered up as its victim!

The affectation he displayed in considering himself at perfect liberty to prolong his residence at Malmaison had evidently for its object to await still some vicissitude of events in his favour. In the secret outpouring of his thoughts to his most intimate confidants, Caulaincourt and Maret, he already spoke of retiring to England, and demanding there Maret dissuaded him from the hospitality of a free soil. this step. Caulaincourt advised him if he meant to adopt it not to lose a moment to assure its success; to embark on board a smuggling vessel, to land on the English coast, to appear before the first magistrate at the place of his landing, and to invoke from him the protection which England affords te He began again to every stranger who touches its soil. deliberate with himself, and seemed inclined to go to America He demanded of the naval minister a list of the American vessels at anchor in the French ports, and it was sent to him. "Remark above all, Sire," said the minister to him, in an American vessel the letter containing this information, stationed at Havre; its captain is now in my antechamber; his vehicle is waiting at my door; he is ready to start; I answer for him, he awaits your orders, and to-morrow, wish, you will be on the high seas, under a private flag, and sheltered from every attempt of

your

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enemies!

if

you

Caulaincourt, in his double capacity, as a member of the government, interested in freeing France from the dangerous presence of its master, and as the friend of Napoleon responsible for his safety to his own honour, anxiously entreated the Emperor to profit by this providential opportunity to "I know well," said Napoleon to him with unjust escape. bitterness, "that my departure is already longed for by some,

General Becker appointed to command his guard.

to rid themselves of my presence at any price, and to deliver me up a prisoner to my enemies!" Caulaincourt replied by a gesture of indignation and reproach, but the Emperor assured him that the remark was not intended to apply to him. "After all," he repeated to his old minister, “what have I to apprehend? It is the duty of France to protect me!"

XV

Meanwhile the Chambers were urging the government to remove, in him, the obstacle to the negociations, the exciting cause of the agitation of Paris, and the still dangerous tribune of the army. The Emperor replied to the applications of the government on this subject, that he was ready to embark for the United States, with his family, if he was furnished with two frigates. The minister of marine instantly ordered these two frigates to be equipped, and M. Bignon, minister of foreign affairs, demanded a safe-conduct for him from the Duke of Wellington.

But the government and the Chambers, informed of the vacillations of Napoleon, and fearing from the multiplied indications which they received from Malmaison, that these vacillations and tardy proceedings were nothing more on his part than manœuvres to gain time, and to find an opportunity of having himself carried off by a body of his army, or to place himself of his own accord at the head of a military insurrection, which would relume the conflagration, and overturn the Chambers, decided on having him watched by a military commandant of his household, merely half disguising his captivity under the honours due to his former rank. General Becker, brother-in-law to General Desaix, who was killed at Marengo while deciding Napoleon's first victory, received orders to repair to Malmaison, to assume there the command of the Emperor's guard, under the semblance of a guard of honour, charged with the safety of the deposed prince. But he was, at the same time, charged with the duty of preventing any one from making use of the name or the person of the Em peror to excite disturbance

Becker's interview with Nap eon.

Davoust, minister of war, and invested with the command in chief of the army since the abdication, intimated to General Becker the orders, at once respectful and severe, which suited such a mission. Becker, who was attached to Napoleon, but more attached to his country and to his duty as a soldier, received these orders with grief, and executed them with decorum. But their meaning could not escape Napoleon. He saw in them the first menace of the extremities to which his obstinacy or his indecision might impel the Chambers, his enemies, and even the friends he had in the government. He was at first indignant as at Fontainebleau and at the Elysée; he then yielded with an appearance of indifference, and even of grace, as if he wished to conceal his abasement from himself, and to seem still to command at the moment he was compelled to obey. His adherents anticipated some sinister order, and arrest and imprisonment were spoken of. Gourgaud, an enthusiastic young man, in whose breast, as with all noble natures, adversity augmented devotion, vowed to immolate the first who should dare to lay a hand on his master. Tears were flowing in the apartment of Queen Hortense.

XVI.

Becker affected at sight of the Emperor. ashamed of his rigorous mission, and but ill-concealing the emotion which the sight of this downfall excited in his sensitive heart, accosted Napoleon with a respectful compassion. He seemed to ask pardon of him for the severities and reverses of fortune. Napoleon drew him into the garden, and asked him, with the indifference of familiarity, what was passing at Paris. Becker replied to him with that considerate adulation which compassion authorises towards irretrievable adversity. He could not, however, conceal from his former general that if he had not abandoned his army after Waterloo, he might have, if not conquered, at least intimidated at the same time both Paris and the foreign powers, at the head of his troops, or behind the ramparts of Strasbourg; and thus, by giving