Interview with Napoleon.

[Inserted in the private journal of M. de Sismondi immediately on leaving the Emperor's presence.]

I had already pubhshed two articles on the Constitution in the Moniteur, when Marshal Bertrand wrote to me on the 1st of May, desiring me to call on him the following morning, Tuesday, at ten o'clock. I arrived some minutes too late, he was just gone out. I waited till noon. On his return, he told me that he wished to present me to the emperor, who had been much pleased by reading my articles in the Moniteur. “; We have read,”he said to me, “your preceding works, and the emperor will be delighted to become acquainted with so distinguished a man.”I thought he meant that they had read them together at the Isle of Elba, but he said it was before, and he fixed the following morning, Wednesday, the 3rd of May, before ten o'clock. I found myself, in fact, on the following morning at the Elysée, in the apartment of the marshal; my name had been left there, and a footman immediately conducted me into the great gallery, which served as an antechamber to the reception hall of the emperor.

The marshal came out soon after, and told me to wait some minutes. I had put on a sword with a plain coat; he advised me to lay it down. In half an hour the door opened; I was called. The emperor was in the hall, with several generals and aides-de-camp, among whom I recognised M. de Flahaut, and Labedoyère; he immediately went into the next room, where he called me to him. “Your name is Italian,”he said to me, “M. de Sismondi; you are, however, I believe, from Geneva? “I explained to him my origin. “I have read your writings with much pleasure,”said he, “and particularly what you have just written on the Constitution.” “I am happy, Sire, that this paper has obtained your approbation, but it frankly expresses my thoughts; and in fact, I look upon this Constitution as the best of all that have been given to France.” “Let us go into the garden,”said he, and he made me put on my hat, and he led me into a large alley of hornbeam, where we walked about for three quarters of an hour alone, tête-à-tête. “I see with much sorrow,”added I, “that this truly liberal constitution has been received with so much ill humour, and with such senseless clamour.” “But I hope that that will become less,”he said, “and my decree on the municipalities, and the presidents of the electoral colleges or assemblies , will do good; besides, look at this nation, it is not yet ripe for such ideas. They contest my right to dissolve the assemblies, and if afterwards I were to dismiss them by means of bayonets, they would think that quite natural.” “What afflicts me,”answered I, “is that they cannot see that the system of your Majesty is necessarily changed; henceforward you are become the representative of the Revolution, the associate of liberal ideas. You have so cruelly experienced during the last year the feebleness of royal alliances, the bad faith, and the secret hatred of all those whom you had sought and protected, that you can no longer have any doubt that the party of liberty is here, and throughout Europe, your only faithful ally.” “It is indubitably so,”answered he, “I feel it perfectly, and I shall never depart from it. The people have felt that very well, and this it is that makes them favourable to me, because, in fact, I have never deviated in my administration from the system of the revolution, not principles as men like you understood them, (vous autres). I had then other views, great projects to which I was tending, but I have applied it, as for example, in me equality of justice, of the taxes, the eligibility to all places. These are the things which the peasantry remained in enjoyment of, and it is on that account that I am popular among them; hut the French, when it regards principles, are extreme in every thing; they judge them with la furia Français; they are distrustful suspicious. The English have much more reflection; their ideas are more matured on all these subjects; there is a justness of thought found in almost all of them. I saw much of them in the Isle of Elba; many were awkward, had a bad carriage, did not know how to come into my salon; but when once entered into conversation with them, one found baneath this rough exterior a mature man, ideas just, profound, and moderate.”

I questioned him about many of the English whom he had seen, about Mr. Douglas, with whom he had been much pleased, and whom he could not conceive to be the same person as he whose violent declamations had been published in the newspapers; about Lady Holland, whom he had not seen, but whose enthusiasm for him he knew. I spoke to him of the embarrassment of their finances, of the sort of nightmare which oppressed them, of the little paper of M. Say. Afterwards by comparison we returned to speaking of France. “The French nation is, however, a fine nation,”said he, “noble, feeling, always ready to undertake whatever is fine and great. What can be finer, for example, than my return now? Well, I have no merit in it, none but that of having divined the nation.” Then I asked him many questions about his return; he answered them all with complaisance. “People imagined,”said he, “that there was a conspiracy, that all was prepared beforehand by intrigues; nothing of all that is true. I had not compromised my secret by communicating it, but I saw well that all was ready for an explosion.” “It has been continually said,”answered I, “that the revolution was the work of the army, but I was persuaded that the peasantry had concurred in it with no less promptitude.” “Without doubt, for I travelled more than fifty leagues without meeting a soldier. The peasants only came to meet me; they followed me singing, with their wives and their children; they had made verses suitable to the occasion, and in my honour and against the senate, which they accused of treason. When I got near to Digne, the inhabitants forced the municipality to come and meet me. It was very ill-disposed towards me; however, it conducted itself very well; I was already absolute master of Digne, I could have hanged a hundred persons there if I had wished. They pressed me to stop in the town, but I wished to go on, and had no time to lose. There is a mountain above Digne, which I ascended, followed by all the population;—at my bivouac, they presented to me successively all the distinguished persons of the country, the police functionaries, the half-pay officers. I had not yet found any troops, but I might have been followed by the whole population if I had wished it.”

We resumed our conversation on the Constitution: he said that he thought that these electoral colleges for life would introduce a suitable mixture of aristocracy. I said that in fact some aristocracy was necessary, and that the lasting interests of duration should be represented in the community as well as those of the present moment. “Government,”replied he, “is a navigation: two elements are necessary to navigate; two also are required to direct the vessel of the state. Balloons can never be directed, because there is no fulcrum to resist the storms which agitate that element: so in a pure democracy, there is no possibility of directing it but by combining it with an aristocracy; one is opposed to the other, and the vessel is guided by contrary passions.” “I entirely feel,”replied I, “the necessity of this aristocratic element; I even look upon hereditary distinction as in accordance with our natural feelings; distinction is a quality which is so much the more precious the freer a country is, and when family glory is more connected with national glory. But in the circumstances in which your Majesty is placed, I think it very difficult to establish, and I do not comprehend how the Chamber of Peers can acquire that consideration which it wants. Your Majesty had previously adopted the system of fusing the old nobility with the new, which had succeeded, but which I believe now to be impossible; the old nobility is decidedly inimical; I do not believe that your Majesty can or ought at present to make it re-enter your administration; and I do not comprehend how a new nobility can maintain itself against the old.” “For the present, in fact, all idea of fusion must be adjourned: such an association would be impossible.” “Then I should have wished your Majesty to substitute an elective for an hereditary aristocracy.” “How would you do that?” “I would have left to your Majesty the right of creating new peers, but I would have left to the Chamber the right of filling up, by election, the members it had lost” “Oh no, that would not be possible. Time will be requisite during the first years. I pity these poor peers, because they will meet with much opposition and jealousy; but after some years people will get accustomed to them; the ancient nobility will re-enter this Chamber, and that will at last appear to be the natural order.”

He spoke to me afterwards of Italy. “They are also a fine people,”said he; “there is stuff there to make a nation of; I had done much for them; I had given them the military spirit which they wanted, and national feeling. They were going on very well, and now they are very unhappy.” “In fact, Sire, you have made very good soldiers of them, I believe.” “Oh, they were quite as brave as the French; they had the same ardour under fire, and the same steadiness.” “I was in Italy last year, when Murat declared himself against you.” “Ah, how he conducted himself then! What bad faith!” “Sire, it must be said in his praise, that he saved the persons and property of twenty thousand Frenchmen, who would have been massacred if he had not very actively protected them.” “Ah, that is the only thing that can be said in his favour.” “I think that there is another still, Sire; seeing the steps he took, and his hesitation, I did not doubt that he was secretly friendly to you, and was only waiting events.” “Oh, not at all; even now he has committed another folly by those unseasonable great preparations.” “He has, then, been beaten?” No, he has even had some advantage at Cisene, but he was not the less obliged to draw back. He ought to have kept on his frontier, with his army well disciplined, on the defensive: his exact force could not have been estimated, and there would have been some hesitation in attacking him, whilst by advancing, he has immediately made the extent of his power known.” “There is, then, no rising in his favour?” “There has been a little, but he has no means of arming them; he has laid up no store of arms; it would not have been very difficult during a year of peace, especially as he had free trade with England, to buy a hundred thousand muskets, but as they are at present, the Italians can do nothing. They have made me many proposals, and were continually sending me solicitations to Elba, but I always answered them—Be quiet at present, there is nothing for you to do. In fact, in France, it was sufficient to gain the army and the people, and all the depôts of artillery, all the arsenals, all strong places were immediately in my hands. But, however much Italy might have been in my favour, Alexandria, Mantua, with all their arsenals, would not the less have remained in the hands of the Austrians. Besides, all those who have most consideration in the nation, who were most able to put themselves at its head, are arrested.” “How is that?” “There has been presented to them a conspiracy in the name of the Duc de Berri, as if he were on the point of entering Italy, to put himself at the head of the French party; it was not true, he knew nothing about it, but they fell into the snare, and those who had scduced them have given their names to the General Bellegarde, who has caused them to be arrested.”I told him that I thought Tuscany was less disposed to a revolution than the rest of Italy. “It was so from the beginning,”said he, “but now they begin to regret the French tribunals, and to complain of the disorder into which they have been thrown by the abolition of the Code. The other day they followed the Grand Duke to Pisa, saying to him, Ma non eta bene, Altezza Reale, tulta quella mutazione: non vogliamo più quelle leggi antiche, ne que' “dicelli, ne tante stravaganze.” He spoke Italian very well, and with a very good accent. I spoke to him afterwards of Switzerland, and said how important her neutrality appeared to me. I related that I had sent an article to the Moniteur, which had not been inserted; he promised to look at it, and to cause it to appear. I said to him, that if Switzerland wished to maintain her neutrality, it would not be violated. He asked me what I thought of the disposition of the Cantons. I said that the new Cantons were favourable to France; that in the aristocratic Cantons the government was very much opposed to him, but that the people saw with much sorrow the changes of the last year; that the small Cantons were his enemies. “Taking it altogether,”said he, “the mass of the population regrets the act of mediation, and I could, with this act, cause a revolution in Switzerland as I have done in France.”He asked me how we were pleased with our constitution at Geneva. I told him that the theory of it was very bad, but that it did not act badly, and that we were very much attached to our independence. “The Genevese,”said he, “have the spirit of wisdom, and the habit of liberty, but is it then an hereditary aristocracy which has been established there? ”

I gave him rapidly an idea of our constitution. On this subject he spoke to me of J. Rousseau; he said he did not like him much, he found much pretension in him, and a style constantly on the stretch. I said to him, that it resembled that of a living author, Chateaubriand, whose style was brilliant, but without simplicity. “Yes,”said he, “he aims at effect; one feels that he is occupied about his phrases, and that beneath these there is no maturity of thought. I have not read the whole of the Genius of Christianity; it is not in my way; it is a system which I do not believe; but, for example, in what he has written against me there is no thought, nothing solid, it is all for effect; however, he is certainly a man of talent.”I told him that I preferred his talent and his character to that of another celebrated man of his time, M. de Fontanes. “Ah, as to him,”said he, “he is entirely on the system of reaction; he conceives nothing but the ancient régime; he sees all that in his imagination, and he has not a mind which can apply itself to real things.”He then spoke to me of English novels, of Richardson and Fielding, and asked me some questions about the Italian and Spanish novels, in the same line as Gil Blas, or in that of Pigault le Brun. I showed my surprise at his knowing these things. “It is because I read a great deal in my youth; I worked hard, and read many novels also. In my youth I was much more discreet than I am now; till my first campaign in Italy, I dared not look a woman in the face; I should not say so much for myself now. During that time also I went through a course of law, and when afterwards we were working on the Code Civil, the councils of state were quite surprised to find that I knew their business. I told them it was because I had studied it.” “Ah,”cried I, “that is what makes great men; it is having successively applied their mind to everything; it is because they have struggled hand to hand with difficulties; it is what princes want, and which renders them at this time so incapable of extricatihg themselves from such perplexing difficulties.” “Ah, it is the fault of the system,”replied he; “but it is irremediable. The Duke of Orleans is the only one of the French princes who has been put to this proof; during his exile he ceased to be a prince, to become a man, therefore he is the only one who has profited by adversity. So they say.”But he then broke off the conversation on that subject. He spoke to me of the popes, who had at all times prevented the Italians from becoming a nation. I said to him, that “people had had at first a great opinion of Pius VII., but that he showed afterwards that he had the obstinacy of a monk, and not the courage of a great man.” “Yes, his firmness has been much boasted of; I had the air of persecuting him; he said to me himself that he was, that he wished to be, a martyr to the faith; but, answered I, how is that, holy father?—you are well fed, well clothed, lodged in a palace, and you call that martyrdom; but you are not disgusted with life.”Then he laughed. Again returning to the praises of the French nation, and comparing them to another nation, he called the French we (nous autres) with quite a national feeling. We had already walked nearly three quarters of an hour; at the two last turns he was much heated, he took off his hat, and his forehead was bathed in sweat. At last he turned towards the palace, we entered his room, he said he was charmed to have made acquaintance with so distinguished a man. He bowed to me, and I retired.