A fan of Chateaubriand’s redskin romances, Las Cases declares himself ready without hesitation to hazard “the naked but noble savages” rather than the elegant but perfidious Bourbons or what he fears may be the implacable English. He is impressed by Andrew’s showing him, on a map of America, the territory he has in mind, three times the size of France. He inquires as to the quality of Indian wine. Before dawn the next morning he reports that the emperor has approved and will finance Andrew’s London mission, and has regarded that same map with interest but no further comment. News has reached them that Louis XVIII has ordered the commander of the Saale frigate to hold them all under arrest on that vessel; the officer has loyally passed word of his order along, but cannot indefinitely delay executing it. They are leaving at once.
Andrew asks and is given permission to accompany them to Bellerophon. ’Twas no reason of strategy at all, only to see, perhaps for the last time, that man Joel Barlow had come justly so to loathe, but who had play’d as none before him the Game of Governments, & convinced a whole century, for good or ill, that one man can turn the tide of history. The emperor speaks to — or of — him once, and briefly, not recognizing him as the man he’d dispatched years before to oversee young Jérôme in America. “So this is the fellow who would crown me king of the Corsairs,” he remarks, and turns his attention to the choreography of boarding the British warship with most impressive effect.
That day and the following morning Andrew spends aboard the “Billy Ruffian,” as her crew call Bellerophon. He watches Napoleon display his talent for ingratiating himself with those useful to him, intuitively exploiting every circumstance to best advantage. So far from abject, the man turns his surrender into a diplomatic and theatrical coup, and receives, without having to ask, every royal prerogative — except the passports. Andrew also completes the letter to Andrée begun in Fort Bowyer and put aside in New Orleans, describing the sack of Washington and the siege of Fort McHenry: he will leave it with Consul Lee to dispatch to Canada via Washington by diplomatic pouch, having reported “officially” to that gentleman the details of Bonaparte’s surrender. In his satisfaction at having got hold of the emperor before his superiors could snatch that plum for themselves (the sails of Admiral Hotham’s Superb are visible all through the morning of the 15th, standing in for Rochefort), Maitland accepts Las Cases’s voucher that “M. Castine” is the party’s “American liaison,” and both permits him aboard and allows him to leave at his pleasure on the 16th.
By noon of when, the emperor having breakfasted aboard the Superb with Hotham, Maitland, and his own aides — and been given a second royal reception, and returned without either the passports or any word of them, but encouraged that his reception in England will not be hostile — it is clear to Andrew that he must commence his next move at once. As the crew of Bellerophon man the yards and weigh anchor to beat out into the Bay of Biscay, Napoleon complimenting them on their quiet efficiency, Andrew returns by longboat to Méduse and thence to Rochefort, bearing in his ear the whispered last charge of the Count de Las Cases, who does not share his master’s optimism: “Sauvez-nous la peau!”
His letter sent on its way, Andrew rushes overland to the Channel, avoiding Paris lest in the confusion of the new government his credentials be too closely examined. But at Tours, at Rouen, at Dieppe, the news is the same: Louis wants Napoleon dead, is relieved to be relieved of the political consequences of seeing personally to his execution, but fears the British will give him asylum or let him go to America despite their secret assurances to the contrary. On July 20 he crosses from Dieppe to Newhaven; by the 21st he is in London, seeking out his erstwhile brother-in-audacity Admiral Sir George Cockburn. He has no plan, beyond learning what the Admiralty’s and the cabinet’s intentions are. He presumes that the dispatch boat carrying Napoleon’s “Themistocles” letter to the prince regent will have arrived, and remembers that Cockburn and the prince regent are friends.
