cependant je vous engage et, au besoin, je vous ordonne de requérir le commandant de cette île de vous renvoyer sur le continent; il ne peut point s'y refuser, puisqu'il n'a action sur vous qu par l'acte volontaire que vous avez signé. Ce sera pour moi une grande consolation que de vous savoir en chemin pour de plus fortunés pays. Arrivé en Europe, soit que vous alliez en Angleterre, ou que vous retourniez dans la patrie, perdez le souvenir des maux qu'on vous a fait souffrir. Vantez-vous de la fidélité que vous m'avez montrée, et de toute l'affection que je vous porte. Si vous voyez un jour ma femme et mon fils, embrassez-les; depuis deux ans je n'en ai aucune nouvelle, ni directe, ni indirecte. Il y a dans ce pays, depuis six mois, uu botaniste allemand, qui les a vus dans le jardin de Schonbrunn, quelques mois avant son départ. Les barbares ont empêché qu'il vint me donner de leurs nouvelles. Toutefois, consolez-vous, et consolez mes amis : mon corps se trouve, il est vrai, au pouvoir de la haine de mes ennemis; ils n'oublient rien de ce qui peut assouvir leur vengeance. Ils me tuent à coups d'épingles; mais la Providence est trop juste pour permettre que cela se prolonge longtemps encore. L'insalubrité de ce climat dévorant, le manque de tout ce qui entretient la vie, mettront, je le sens, un terme prompt à cette existence, dont les derniers momens seront l'opprobre du caractère anglais. L'Europe signalera un jour avec horreur cet homme hypocrite et méchant, que les vrais Anglais désavoueront pour Breton. Comme tout porte à penser qu'on ne vous permettra pas de venir me voir avant votre départ, recevez mes embrassemens, l'assurance de mon estime et de mon amitié. Soyez heureux. Translation of the Declaration of the Emperor Napoleon. On the 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, and 16th August, 1819, attempts were made for the first time to violate the pavilion inhabited by the Emperor Napoleon, which to this epoch had been constantly respected. He resisted against this violence by shutting and locking the doors. In this situation, he reiterates the protestation which he has made, and caused to be made several times, that the right of his door shall not be violated unless by walking over his corpse. He has given up every thing, and for three years has lived concentrated in the interior of six small rooms, in order to escape from insults and outrages. If baseness is carried to the degree of envying him this refuge, it has been determined to leave him no other than the tomb. Labouring for two years under a chronic hepatitis, a disease endemic in this place, and for a year deprived of the assistance of his physicians by the forcible removal of Doctor O'Meara in July, 1818, and of Doctor Stokoe in January, 1819, he has experienced several crises, during which he has been obliged to keep his bed, sometimes for fifteen or twenty successive days. At the present moment, in the midst of one of the most violent of the crises that he has yet experienced, confined to his bed for nine days, having only patience, diet, and the bath, to oppose to the disease; for six days his tranquillity has been disturbed by threats of an attack, and of outrages which the Prince Regent, Lord Liverpool, and all Europe well know he will never submit to. As the wish to debase and to insult him is daily manifested, he reiterates the declaration he has already made. That he has not taken, nor will he take any notice, nor has he ordered, nor will he order any answer to be given to any despatches or packets, the wording of which shall be done in a manner injurious to him, and contrary to the forms which have been established for four years, to correspond with him through the intermedia tion of his officers; that he has thrown, and wiH throw into the fire, or out of the windows, those insulting packets, not wishing to innovate any thing upon the state of affairs that has existed for some years. (Signed) Longwood, 16th August, 1819. NAPOLEON.. This declaration I have been informed was cal led forth by the following circumstance: while Count Montholon was sick, Sir Hudson Lowe, ingenious in inventing new vexations, refused to correspond with Count Bertrand, and wanted to insist upon having a direct correspondence with the emperor, either by the visit of one of his officers twice a day to him, or by letter. To attain this, he sent Sir Thomas Reade or Major Harrison to Longwood several days, who entered the house, proceeded to the outer door of Napoleon's apartments, against which they continued to knock for some time, exclaiming, "Come out, Napoleon Bonaparte!"-" We want Napoleon Bonaparte!" &c.; concluding this scene of uncalled for outrage by leaving behind them расkets of letters addressed to "Napoleon Buonaparte," written in the usual Plantation House style. THE END. |