ON THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE CABINET OF
BONAPARTE, BY GOLDSMITH.—DETAILS, &C.
15th.—When I was on board the Northumberland, I had heard the Secret History of the Cabinet of Bonaparte by Goldsmith, spoken of, and, in my first leisure moments here, I felt an inclination to skim it over; but I met with great difficulty in obtaining it, as the English excused themselves from putting it into my hands, for a considerable time, saying, it was such an abominable libel that they were afraid to let me have it, and were themselves ashamed of it. I was for a long time under the necessity of urging them incessantly, repeating that we were all proof against such civilities; that he who was the object of them only used to laugh at such things, when chance brought them before his eyes; and moreover that, if this work was so bad as it was said to be, it must have failed in its end, and ceased to be hurtful at all. I asked who this Goldsmith, the author, was. I was told, he was an Englishman who ... at Paris, and who, upon his return to England, had endeavoured to avoid ... and at the same time to gain more money, by loading with insults and imprecations that idol to whom he had so long offered incense. I at last obtained the work. It must be confessed that it would be difficult to bring together more horrible and ridiculous abominations than are presented to us in the first pages of this book: rapes, poison, incest, assassination, and all that belongs to them, are heaped by the author upon his hero, and that from his earliest childhood. It is true that the author appears to have given himself little concern about bestowing on these calumnies any air of probability; and that he himself sometimes demonstrates their impossibility, and sometimes refutes them by anachronisms, alibis, and contradictions of every kind; mistakes in the names, persons, and most authentic facts, &c. Thus, for example, when Napoleon was only about ten or twelve years of age, and was confined within the bounds of the Military School, he causes him to commit outrages which would require at least the age of manhood, and a certain degree of liberty, &c. The author makes him undertake what he calls the robberies of Italy, at the head of eight thousand galley-slaves, who had escaped from the bagnio at Toulon. Afterwards, he makes twenty thousand Poles abandon the Austrian ranks to join the standard of the French General, &c. The same author makes Napoleon arrive at Paris in Fructidor, when all the world knows that he never quitted his army. He makes him treat with the Prince of Condé, and ask the hand of the Princess Royal as the price of his treachery. I omit a number of other things equally absurd and impudent. It is evident that, with respect to the loose and ridiculous anecdotes particularly, he only collected all he could hear; but from what source has he drawn his information? The greater part of the anecdotes have certainly had their rise in certain defamatory and malevolent circles of Paris; but, as long as they were on that ground, they still preserved the appearance of some wit, salt, point, colour, some grace in the relation; whilst the stories in this book have evidently descended from the drawing-rooms into the streets, and have only been picked up after rolling in the kennel. The English allowed it to be so coarse that, except to the most vulgar classes of society, the work was a poison which carried its own antidote along with it.
It may probably excite astonishment that I did not lay aside such a production upon reading the first page of it; but its coarseness and vulgarity are so gross that it cannot excite anger: on the other hand, there is no disgust which may not be got over in order to amuse the heavy hours at St. Helena. We consider ourselves fortunate in having any thing to peruse. “Time,” said the Emperor, a few days ago, “is the only thing of which we have too much here.” I therefore continued the work. And besides, I may perhaps be allowed to say that it is not without some pleasure that I now read the absurd tales, the lies, and calumnies, which an author pretends to derive, as usual, from the best authority, relating to objects which I am now so perfectly well acquainted with, and which have become as familiar to me as the details of my own life; and it is likewise gratifying to lay down pages filled with the falsest representations, and exhibiting a portrait purely fanciful to study truth by the side of the real personage, in his own conversation, ever full of novelties and grand ideas.
The Emperor having desired me to come to him this morning after breakfast, I found him in his morning-gown lying on his sofa. The conversation led him to ask me what I was reading at this moment. I replied that it was one of the most notorious and scurrilous libels published against him, and I quoted to him upon the spot some of its most abominable stories. He laughed heartily at them, and desired to see the work. I sent for it, and we went over it together. In passing from one horrid calumny to another, he exclaimed, “Jesus!” crossing himself repeatedly—a custom which I have perceived to be familiar with him, in his little friendly circle, whenever he meets with monstrous, impudent, cynical assertions, which excite his indignation and surprise without rousing his anger. As we proceeded, the Emperor analyzed certain facts, and corrected points of which the author might have known something. Sometimes he shrugged up his shoulders out of compassion; at others, he laughed heartily; but he never betrayed the least sign of anger. When he read the article which speaks of his great debaucheries and excesses, the violences and the outrages which he is represented to have committed, he observed that the author, doubtless, wished to make a hero of him in every respect; that he willingly left him to those who had charged him with impotency; that it was for these gentlemen to agree among themselves; adding, merrily, “that every man was not so unlucky as the pleader of Toulouse.” They were in the wrong, however, he continued, to attack him upon the score of morals; him, who, as all the world knew, had so singularly improved them. They could not be ignorant that he was not at all inclined, by nature, to debauchery; and that, moreover, the multiplicity of his affairs would never have allowed him time to indulge in it. When he came to the pages where his mother was described as acting the most disgusting and abject part at Marseilles, he stopped, and repeated several times with an accent of indignation, and something approaching to grief, “Ah! Madame!—Poor Madame!—with her lofty character! if she were to read this!—Great God!”
We thus passed more than two hours, after which he began to dress. Doctor O’Meara was introduced to him: it was the usual hour of his being admitted. “Dottore,” said the Emperor to him in Italian, whilst he was shaving himself, “I have just read one of your fine London productions against me.” The Doctor’s countenance indicated a wish to know what it was. I shewed him the book at a distance; it was himself who had lent it to me: he was disconcerted. “It is a very just remark,” continued the Emperor, “that it is the truth only which gives offence. I have not been angry for a moment; but I have frequently laughed at it.” The Doctor endeavoured to reply, and puzzled himself with high-flown sentences: it was, he said, an infamous, disgusting libel; every body knew it to be such; nobody paid any attention to it: nevertheless, persons might be found who would believe it, from its not having been replied to. “But how can that be helped?” said the Emperor. “If it should enter any one’s head to put in print that I had grown hairy, and walked on all fours, there are people who would believe it, and would say that God had punished me as he did Nebuchadnezzar. And what could I do? There is no remedy in such cases.” The Doctor went away, hardly able to believe the gaiety, the indifference, the good-nature of which he had just been witness: with regard to ourselves, we were now accustomed to it.
THE EMPEROR RESOLVES TO LEARN ENGLISH, &C.