With the exception of the very slight apparent change induced at Fontainebleau by the presence of these gentlemen, no remarkable incident, at least to my knowledge, occurred to disturb the sad and uniform life of the Emperor in the palace. All remained gloomy and silent among the inhabitants of this last imperial abode; and yet I thought the Emperor was personally more tranquil since he had definitively come to a conclusion than while his mind was still wavering in the most painful indecision. He sometimes spoke in my presence of the Empress and his son, but not so often as I should have expected. One thing, however, which profoundly impressed me was that not a word ever issued from his lips which could recall the fatal resolution he had taken in the night cf April 11-12, and which, as has been seen, did not have such disastrous results as might have been expected. What a night! what a night! While I live it will be impossible for me to think of it without a shudder.
After the arrival of the commissioners of the allied powers, the Emperor seemed gradually to acclimatize himself, as one might say, to their presence, and the chief occupation of the entire household was to make ready for departure. One day, while I was dressing His Majesty, he said to me with a smile: "Eh well? my son, get your cart ready; we will go and plant our cabbages." Alas! when I heard these familiar words I was very far from supposing that by an unexampled concatenation of circumstances I was to be forced to submit to an inexplicable fatality which willed that, in spite of my ardent desire, I should not accompany the Emperor to the land of exile.
The day before that fixed for the departure, the grand marshal of the palace sent for me. After giving me some orders relative to the journey, he said the Emperor wished to know how much money I had received from him. I gave the account at once to the grand marshal, who found that the same amounted to some three hundred thousand francs, including the gold contained in a cash-box which had been remitted to me by Baron Fain, seeing that he was not to make the voyage. The grand marshal told me that he would give an account of it to the Emperor. An hour later he summoned me again and said that His Majesty thought there should be one hundred thousand francs more. I replied that I had, in fact, one hundred thousand francs given me by the Emperor, who had told me to bury them in my garden; in short, I related all the details which have been read in a previous chapter, and begged him to ask if these were the hundred thousand francs referred to by His Majesty. Comte Bertrand promised to do so, and then it was that I committed the enormous fault of not addressing myself directly to the Emperor. In my position, nothing could have been easier, and I had often experienced that whenever it was possible, it was always better to go to him in person than to have recourse to any intermediary whatever. It would have been all the better for me to act in that way, since if the Emperor had asked me to return the hundred thousand francs he had given me, which after all was scarcely supposable, I was more than inclined to restore them without permitting myself the least reproachful thought. Judge of my astonishment when the grand marshal brought back word that the Emperor did not remember having given me the sum in question. At the first moment I turned red with indignation and anger. What! The Emperor could have allowed Comte Bertrand to believe that I, his faithful servant, had wished to appropriate to my own use a sum which he had given me with all the circumstances I have detailed! That was the only thought I was capable of. I went out in a state impossible to describe, assuring the grand marshal that within an hour at most I would restore to him His Majesty's fatal gift.
In passing hastily through the court of the palace I met M. de Turenne, to whom I related what had just befallen me. "That does not surprise me," said he, "and we shall see many more such." Devoured by a sort of moral fever, my mind upset, my heart broken, I looked for Denis, the wardrobe waiter of whom I have already spoken; I found him, very fortunately, and we ran with all speed to my country place, and God is my witness that the loss of the hundred thousand francs had nothing to do with my profound distress; I did not even think of it. As on the first occasion, we went by way of the forest in order not to be observed. We began to dig in the ground for the treasure we had placed there, and in my eagerness to regain this wretched gold and return it to the grand marshal, I began further away than I ought. No, I can never describe the despair that seized me when, seeing that we found nothing, I thought that some one must have seen and followed us, and, in short, that I had been robbed. This was a still more crushing blow than the first; I foresaw the result of it with horror; what would be said, what would be thought of me? would I be believed on my word? Surely the grand marshal, already prejudiced by the inexplicable response of the Emperor, would take me for a man devoid of honor. I was overwhelmed by these fatal thoughts when Denis made me observe that we had not been digging in the right place, but were several feet away from it. I caught eagerly at this glimmer of hope; once more we began to dig more eagerly than ever, and I can say without exaggeration that my joy bordered on delirium when I perceived the first of the sacks. We took out the whole five in succession, and with the assistance of Denis I brought them back to the palace. I placed them without delay in the hands of the grand marshal, along with the keys of the Emperor's dressing-case and the cash-box remitted to me by Baron Fain. As I was leaving him I said: "Monseigneur, I beg you to be so good as to inform His Majesty that I shall not follow him." "I will tell him so."
After this cold and laconic reply, I left the palace at once and was soon at the house of M. Clément, rue Coq-Gris, a bailiff who had long had charge of the repairs on my little house during the long absences necessitated by the journeys and campaigns of the Emperor. There I gave free vent to my despair. I was stifling with rage when I thought that any one could have suspected my honesty, after I had served the Emperor fourteen years with a disinterestedness so scrupulous that many people called it folly; when I had never asked the Emperor for anything, either for myself or my relatives! My head swam when I tried to explain to myself how it was possible that the Emperor, who knew this well, could have given me out to a third person as a dishonorable man; the more I thought of it, the more extreme became my indignation, and the less possible was it for me to discover the shadow of a motive for the blow that struck me. I was in the greatest violence of my despair when M. Hubert, ordinary valet de chambre of the Emperor, came to tell me that His Majesty would give me whatever I pleased if I would follow him, and that three hundred thousand francs would be counted out to me at once. In this first moment, I ask all honest men what I could do, and what they would have done in my place? I replied that when I resolved to devote my entire life to the service of the Emperor, I had no vile interest in view; but that it broke my heart to think he could have allowed Comte Bertrand to think me an impostor and a dishonest man. Ah! how happy would I have been then if the Emperor had never dreamed of giving me those cursed hundred thousand francs! Such ideas put me in torment. Ah! if I could have taken twenty-four hours for reflection, just as my resentment was, how I would have sacrificed it! I would have thought of nothing but the Emperor; I would have followed him; a painful and inexplicable fatality would not have it so.
This happened on April 19, the unhappiest day of my life. What an evening, what a night I passed! What grief was mine when I learned next day that the Emperor had departed at noon, after bidding farewell to his guard! By morning all my resentment had cooled down, on thinking of the Emperor. Twenty times I had wished to return to the palace; twenty times after his departure, I wanted to post after him until I could rejoin him; but I was chained fast by the very offer he had made me through M. Hubert. "Perhaps," thought I, "he may believe that it is that which brings me; it will doubtless be said by those around him, and what opinion will they have of me?" In this cruel perplexity I dared not come to a decision; I suffered all that a man can suffer, and at times that which was only too true seemed unreal to me, so impossible did it appear that I could be where the Emperor was not. Everything in this frightful position served to increase my anguish; I was sufficiently acquainted with the Emperor to know that, even should I return to him, he would never forget that I had wished to leave him; I felt unable to endure such a reproach from his mouth; moreover, the physical sufferings caused by the malady with which I was attacked had become extremely acute, and I was obliged to keep my bed for a long time. I could once more have overcome these physical sufferings, cruel though they were, but the frightful complication of my position reduced me almost to stupidity; I saw nothing that surrounded me; I heard nothing that was said to me.
After what I have said, the reader will surely not expect me to tell him anything about the farewell of the Emperor to his old and faithful guard, about which, for that matter, enough has been published to let the truth be known concerning an event which took place in public. Here my Memoirs might end, but I think the reader will not refuse me a few moments' attention for facts which I have a right to explain, and for certain others bearing on the return from Elba. I will continue on the first point; the second will be the subject of a final chapter.
The Emperor, then, had departed, and I was shut up alone in my country house, thenceforward very dismal to me; I held myself aloof from communication with any one whatever, reading no news, and not seeking to learn any. After a while I received a visit from one of my Parisian friends, who told me that the journals were talking of my conduct without knowing what it had been, and that they blamed it greatly; he added that it was M. de Turenne who had sent the editors the note in which I was criticised with extreme severity. I must say that I did not believe this; I knew M. de Turenne too well to believe him capable of so dishonorable a proceeding, all the more so because I had told him the whole thing frankly, and I have quoted his reply. But wherever it came from, the harm was none the less done, and I was reduced to silence by the incredible complexity of my position. Certainly, nothing would have been easier than to reply, to repel the calumny by an exact recital of the facts; but ought I to justify myself in that way, and, so to say, by accusing the Emperor, and that at a moment when so violent an excitement prevailed among his enemies? When I saw so great a man the target of calumny, I, a pitiful member of the obscure multitude, could well endure that some of these envenomed shafts should likewise fall on me. At present the time has come to tell the truth, and I have told it without reserve, not to excuse myself; for, on the contrary, I accuse myself of not having made a total abnegation of myself and what would have been said about me, and followed the Emperor to the island of Elba. Yet, let me permitted to say in my own favor, that in this medley of physical and moral sufferings which simultaneously assailed me, one ought to be very sure of never having failed himself, before he utterly condemns the irritability so natural to a man of honor who is accused of a fraudulent abstraction. So this, I said to myself, is the reward of so many cares, so many fatigues, of a boundless devotion and a delicacy which the Emperor - I can say it openly - has often praised, and to which he afterwards did justice, as will be seen when I have to speak of certain circumstances belonging to the epoch of March 20 in the following year.
The resolution to quit the Emperor, which I took in my despair, has been gratuitously and maliciously ascribed to interested motives, whereas the simplest good sense should suffice to make it plain that if I had been capable of being guided by my interests everything would have inclined me to follow His Majesty. In fact, the chagrin which he caused me, and the violent manner in which I was affected by it, have been more injurious to me than any other determination could have been. What could I hope for in France, where I had no right to anything? Is it not evident, moreover, to any one who will consider my position, one so confidential near the Emperor, that if I had been guided by the love of money my place would have allowed me to reap abundant harvests, without any detriment to my reputation; but my disinterestedness was so well known that I can defy any one to say that in all the time my favor lasted I ever made use of it to render any but disinterested services. Many a time I have refused to support a request simply because the solicitation to do so was accompanied by an offer of money, - offers that were often very considerable. Let me cite a single example among many others of a similar kind: I received one day an offer of four hundred thousand francs from a lady of very noble name, if I would induce the Emperor to receive favorably a petition in which she claimed what was due to her for a piece of ground on which the harbor of Bayonne had been constructed. I had succeeded in requests more difficult than this; well, I refused to lend it my support, solely because of the offer made me; I would have liked to oblige this lady, but simply for the pleasure of obliging her, and it was always with that single end in view that I solicited favors from the Emperor which he nearly always granted. Nor can any one say that I asked His Majesty for licenses, for lottery bureaux, or anything of that kind, a scandalous trade in which is known to have been often made, and, without any doubt, if I had asked for anything of the kind, the Emperor would have given it.
The confidence which had always been shown me by the Emperor was such that even at Fontainebleau, as it had been decided that none of the ordinary valets de chambre of His Majesty were to accompany him to the island of Elba, the Emperor left to me the selection of a young man who could second me in my service. I thought of an apartment waiter whose probity was perfectly well known to me, and who was, besides, the son of Madame Marchand, the first cradle-rocker of the King of Rome. I mentioned him to the Emperor, who approved of him, and I went at once to communicate the news to M. Marchand, who accepted the place with gratitude and showed me by his thanks how happy he was to accompany us; I say us, for at that moment I was far enough from foreseeing the succession of fatal circumstances which I have faithfully reported; and it will be seen hereafter, by the manner in which M. Marchand spoke of me at the Tuileries, during the Hundred Days, that I had not placed confidence in an ingrate.