The Tragedy of St. Helena | Page 9

entitled him to pursue a policy of unrelenting severity,
and that homage should be paid as his reward. He thirsted for respect to
be shown himself, and was amazed at the inordinate ingratitude of the
French in not recognising his amiable qualities. It was his habit to
remind them that but for his clemency in carrying out the instructions
of Bathurst and those who acted with him, their condition could be
made unendurable. He was incapable of grasping the lofty personality
of the persecuted guest of England.
The popular, though erroneous, idea that Napoleon was, and ever had
been, a beast of prey, fascinated him; his days were occupied in
planning out schemes of closer supervision, and his nights were
haunted with the vision of his charge smashing down every barrier he
had racked his intellect to construct, and then vanishing from the
benevolent custody of his saintly Government to again wage
sanguinary war and spill rivers of blood. The awful presentiment of
escape and the consequences of it were ever lacerating his uneasy spirit,
and thus he never allowed himself to be forgotten; restrictions impishly
vexatious were ordered with monotonous regularity. Napoleon aptly
described Lowe as "being afflicted with an inveterate itch."
Montholon, in vol. i. p. 184, relates how Lowe would often leap out of
bed in the middle of the night, after dreaming of the Emperor's flight,
mount his horse and ride, like a man demented, to Longwood, only to
be assured by the officer on duty that all was well and that the smitten
hero was still his prisoner. When Napoleon was told of these nocturnal
visitations, he was overcome with mirth, but at the same time filled
with contempt, not alone for this amazing specimen, but for the
creatures who had created him a dignitary.
The tragic farce of sending the Emperor to the poisonous plateau of
Longwood, and giving Lowe Plantation House with its much more
healthy climate to reside at, is a phenomenon which few people who
have made themselves conversant with all the facts and circumstances

will be able to understand. But the policy of this Government, of whom
the Scottish bard sings so rapturously, is a problem that can never be
solved.
To a wise body of men, and in view of the fact that the eyes of the
world were fixed upon them and on the vanquished man, their prisoner,
the primary thought would have been compassion, even to indulgence;
instead of which they and their agents behaved as though they were
devoid of humane feelings.
Lowe's ambition seems to have been to ignore propriety, and to force
his way to the Emperor's privacy in order that he might assure himself
that his charge had not escaped, but his ambition and his heroics were
calmly and contemptuously ignored. "Tell my gaoler," said Napoleon
to his valet Noverras, "that it is in his power to change his keys for the
hatchet of the executioner, and that if he enters, it shall be over a corpse.
Give me my pistols," and it is said by Montholon, to whom the
Emperor was dictating at the time of the intrusion, that Sir Hudson
heard this answer and retired confounded. The ultimatum dazed him,
but he was forced to understand that beyond a certain limit, heroics,
fooleries, and impertinences would not be tolerated by this terrible
scavenger of European bureaucracy.[5] Lowe, in very truth, discerned
the stern reality of the Emperor's piercing words, and he felt the need of
greater caution bearing down on him. He pondered over these grave
developments as he journeyed back to Plantation House, there to
concoct and dispatch with all speed a tale that would chill his
confederates at St. Stephen's with horror, and give them a further
opportunity of showing how wise they were in their plan of banishment
and rigid precautions, and in their selection of so distinguished and
dauntless a person as Sir Hudson Lowe, on whom they implicitly relied
to carry out their Christlike benefactions.
Cartoonists, pamphleteers, Bourbonites, treasonites, meteoric females,
all were supplied with the requisite material for declamatory speeches
to be hurled at the Emperor in the hope of being reaped to the glory of
God and the British ministry. The story of the attempted invasion of
Longwood and its sequel shocks the fine susceptibilities of the satellites

by whom Lowe is surrounded. They bellow out frothy words of
vengeance. Sir Thomas Reade, the noisiest filibuster of them all,
indicates his method of settling matters at Longwood. This incident
arose through Napoleon refusing to see Sir Thomas Strange, an Indian
Judge. Las Cases had just been forcibly removed. The Emperor was
feeling the cruelty of this act very keenly, so he sent the following reply
to Lowe's request that he should see Sir Thomas: "Tell the