and, in the latter, in learning to distinguish what is authentic from what is mere report or conjecture.
I have engaged that, if the Emperor could endure being annoyed every day with such lessons, he would be able to read the papers in a month without the assistance of any of us. The Emperor wished afterwards to do some exercises; he wrote some sentences which were dictated to him, and translated them into English, with the assistance of a little table, which I made for him, of the auxiliary verbs and articles, and aided by the dictionary for other words which I made him look out himself. I explained to him the rules of syntax and grammar, as they came before us: in this manner he formed various sentences, which amused him more than the versions which we also attempted. After the lesson, at two o’clock, we took a walk in the garden.
Several musquet shots were fired: they were so near us that they appeared to have been fired in the garden itself. The Emperor observed to me that my son (we thought it was he) seemed to have good sport: I replied that it was the last time he should enjoy it so near the Emperor. “Really,” said he, “you may as well go and tell him that he is only to come within cannon-shot of us.” I ran: we had accused him wrongfully, for the guns were fired by the people who were training the Emperor’s horses.
After dinner, during coffee, the Emperor, taking me to the corner of the chimney-piece, put his hand upon my head to measure my height, and said, “I am a giant to you.”—“Your Majesty is a giant to so many others,” I observed to him, “that I am not at all concerned at it.” He spoke immediately of something else; for he does not like to dwell on expressions of this kind.
OUR DAILY HABITS.—CONVERSATION WITH GOVERNOR WILKS.—ARMIES.—CHEMISTRY.—POLITICS.—REMARKS ON INDIA.—DELPHINE, BY MAD. DE STAËL.—NECKER, CALONNE.
18th—20th. We led a life of great uniformity. The Emperor did not go out in the mornings. The English lesson was very regularly taken about two o’clock; then followed either a walk in the garden, or some presentations, which, however, were very rare; afterwards a little excursion in the calash, as the horses were at last arrived. Before dinner we proceeded with the revision of the Campaigns of Italy or Egypt: after dinner we read romances.
On the 20th, the Emperor received Governor Wilks, with whom he had a profound discussion on the army, the sciences, government, and the Indies. Speaking of the organization of the English army, he dwelt much on the principles of promotion in it; expressing his surprise that, in a country in which equality of rights is maintained, the soldiers so seldom become officers.
Colonel Wilks admitted that the English soldiers were not formed to become officers; and said that the English were equally astonished at the great difference they had remarked in the French army, where almost every soldier shewed the nascent talents of an officer. “That,” observed the Emperor, “is one of the great results of the Conscription; it has rendered the French army the best constituted that ever existed. It is an institution,” he continued, “eminently national, and already strongly interwoven with our habits; it had ceased to be a cause of grief, except to mothers; and the time was at hand, when a girl would not have listened to a young man who had not acquitted himself of this debt to his country. And it would have been only when arrived at this point,” added he, “that the Conscription would have manifested the full extent of its advantages. When the service no longer bears the appearance of punishment or compulsory duty, but is become a point of honour, on which all are jealous, then only is the nation great, glorious and powerful; it is then that its existence is proof against reverses, invasions—even the hand of time!
“Besides,” continued he, “it may be truly said that there is nothing that may not be obtained from Frenchmen by the excitement of danger; it seems to animate them; it is an inheritance which they derive from their Gallic forefathers.... Courage, the love of glory, are, with the French, an instinct, a kind of sixth sense. How often in the heat of battle has my attention been fixed on my young conscripts, rushing, for the first time, into the thickest of the fight: honour and valour bursting forth at every pore.”
After this, the Emperor, knowing that Governor Wilks was well informed in chemistry, attacked him on that subject. He spoke of the immense progress in all our manufactures occasioned by this science. He said, that both England and France, undoubtedly, possessed great chemists; but that chemistry was more generally diffused in France, and more particularly directed to useful results; that in England it remained a science, while in France it was becoming entirely practical. The Governor admitted that these observations were perfectly correct, and, with a liberality of sentiment, added that it was to him, the Emperor, that all these advantages were owing, and that, wherever science was led by the hand of power, it would produce great and happy effects upon the well-being of society. The Emperor observed that of late France had obtained sugar from the beet-root, as good and cheap as that extracted from the sugar-cane. The Governor was astonished; he had not even suspected it. The Emperor assured him that it was an established fact, opposed, as it was, to the rooted prejudices of all Europe, France itself not excepted. He added that it was the same with woad, the substitute for indigo, and with almost all the colonial produce except the dye-woods. This led him to conclude that if the invention of the compass had produced a revolution in commerce, the progress of chemistry bade fair to produce a counter-revolution.
The conversation then turned on the present numerous emigrations of the artisans of France and England to America. The Emperor observed that this favoured country grew rich by our follies. The Governor smiled, and replied, that those of England would occupy the first place in the list, from the numerous errors of administration, which had led to the revolt and subsequent emancipation of the Colonies. The Emperor said that their emancipation was inevitable; that when children had attained the size of their fathers, it was difficult to retain them long in a state of obedience.
They then spoke of India; the Governor had resided there many years, and had filled high situations; he had made important researches; he was able to reply to a multitude of questions proposed to him by the Emperor, respecting the laws, the manners, the usages of the Hindoos, the administration of the English, the nature and construction of the existing laws, &c.
The English are governed according to the laws of England; the natives by local acts made by the several Councils in the service of the Company, with whom it is a fundamental principle to render them as nearly similar as possible to the laws of the people themselves.
Hyder Aly was a man of genius; Tippoo, his son, was arrogant, ignorant, and rash. The former had upwards of 100,000 men; the latter scarcely ever more than 50,000. These people are not deficient in courage, but they do not possess our physical strength, and have neither discipline nor any knowledge of tactics. Seventeen thousand men in the English service, of whom only 4000 were Europeans, were sufficient to destroy the empire of Mysore. It was, however, to be presumed that, sooner or later, the national spirit would rescue these regions from the dominion of the Europeans. The intermixture of European blood with that of the natives, was producing a mixed race, whose numbers and disposition certainly prepared the way for a great revolution. Nevertheless, in their actual condition, the people were happier than they had been previously to the dominion of the English: an impartial administration of justice, and the mildness of the government were, for the present, the strongest supports of the power of the parent state. It was also considered expedient to prohibit the English and other Europeans from buying lands there, or forming hereditary establishments, &c.
Madame de Staël’s Delphine was at this time a subject of conversation at our evening parties. The Emperor analyzed it: few things in it escaped his censure. The irregularity of mind and imagination which pervades it excited his criticism: there were throughout, said he, the same faults which had formerly made him keep the authoress at a distance, notwithstanding the most pointed advances and the most unremitting flattery
