HKB
No. 78.
Friedland.--On this day he wrote a further letter to the Queen of Holland (No. 12,761 of the Correspondence): "My daughter, I have your letter dated Orleans. Your grief pains me, but I should like you to possess more courage; to live is to suffer, and the true man is always fighting for mastery over himself. I do not like to see you unjust towards the little Napoleon Louis, and towards all your friends. Your mother and I had hoped to be more to you than we are." She had been sent to take the waters of Cauterets, and had left her child Napoleon Louis (who died at Forli, 1831) with Josephine, who writes to her daughter (June 11th): "He amuses me much; he is so gentle. I find he has all the ways of that poor child that we mourn." And a few days later: "There remains to you a husband, an interesting child, and a mother whose love you know." Josephine had with women the same tact that her husband had with men, but the Bonaparte family, with all its good qualities, strained the tact and tempers of both to the utmost.
No. 79.
Tilsit.--Referring to Napoleon and Alexander at Tilsit, Michaud says: "Both full of wiles and devices, they affected nevertheless the most perfect sentiments of generosity, which at the bottom they scarcely dreamed of practising. Reunited, they were the masters of the world, but such a union seemed impossible; they would rather share it among themselves. Allies and rivals, friends and enemies, all were sacrificed; henceforth there were to be only two powers, that of the East and that of the West. Bonaparte at this time actually ruled from the Niemen to the Straits of Gibraltar, from the North Sea to the base of the Italian Peninsula."
FOOTNOTES
[60] Bouillet, Dictionnaire Universelle, &c.
[61] "The Queen of that Court was the fair Madame Tallien. All that imagination can conceive will scarcely approach the reality; beautiful after the antique fashion, she had at once grace and dignity; without being endowed with a superior wit, she possessed the art of making the best of it, and won people's hearts by her great kindness."--Memoirs of Marmont, vol. i., p. 887.
[62] This brave general was mortally wounded in the cavalry charge which saved the battle, and the friends of Bernadotte assert that the message was never given--an assertion more credible if the future king's record had been better on other occasions.
[63] Alison says 75,000 allies, 85,000 French, but admits allies had 100 more cannon.
[64] Augereau, says Méneval, went out of his mind during this battle, and had to be sent back to France.
SERIES H
No. 1.
Milan.--Magnificent public works were set on foot by Napoleon at Milan, and the Cathedral daily adorned with fresh marvels of sculpture. Arriving here on the morning of the 22nd, Napoleon goes first to hear the Te Deum at the Cathedral, then to see Eugène's wife at the Monza Palace; in the evening to the La Scala Theatre, and finishes the day (to use an Irishism) by working most of the night.
Mont Cenis.--"The roads of the Simplon and Mont Cenis were kept in the finest order, and daily attracted fresh crowds of strangers to the Italian plains." So says Alison, but on the present occasion Napoleon was overtaken by a storm which put his life in danger. He was fortunate enough to reach a cave in which he took refuge. This cave appeared to him, as he afterwards said, "a cave of diamonds" (Méneval).