You have betray’d us, Las Cases complain’d to me [he writes] as soon as we could speak privately. Nor did my argument much move him; for while he agreed that rescue might be more feasible from St. Helena than from Britain, he vow’d the Emperor was still adamant on that score, and was prepared to take his life rather than submit voluntarily to exile. As for that, I thot, it was likely mere bluff, inasmuch as his sentence was now clear beyond doubt, and Bellerophon’s putting out to sea removed any hope of their being received ashore or otherwise delaying execution of that sentence; yet he was still alive. On this head, however, I held my peace, proposing instead what certain of those sign-boards had proposed to me: namely, that the Emperor might be dissuaded from suicide, and induced to go peacefully tho protestingly into exile, if he were shown the opportunity therein to increase his fame. His public confinement in Tor Bay & Plymouth Sound had workt considerably to his advantage in one respect: he was now more than ever the cynosure of all eyes, and his letters, from “Themistocles” forward (so I learn’d from Las Cases), tho undeliver’d or unreply’d to, had in fact been addrest less to their addressees than to History, which is to say, to Public Opinion. What better chance, then, to bend the world in his favor, than to turn his exile into public martyrdom, by writing his memoirs on St. Helena & smuggling them out for publication? He had made history; he could now re-make & revise it to his pleasure! Thus the world’s forgetfulness, which he fear’d would bury him, would bury instead his great crimes against mankind (I call’d them his little misjudgments) & eagerly believe whate’er he wrote.
Moreover (Andrew adds by way of clincher to his appeal), such a memoir will need delivery to the mainland, and publication, and collection of its author’s royalties. What better way for a trusted aide like Monsieur the Count de Las Cases at once to do his master a signal service and to abbreviate his own exile?
At 1st skeptical, the Count was by this last altogether convinced — if only, he declared, to save the Emperor’s life & honor. All that afternoon & evening, as we hove to to await Prometheus, Tonnant, Eurotas, & Myrmidon, and then beat southeast toward rendezvous with Admiral Cockburn, the Count prest my plan in private with Napoleon. That same night, I was gratify’d to hear, the unemperor’d Emperor dictated a grand letter of protest, addrest “to History…” And tho he still vow’d to the English officers they would never fetch him alive to St. Helena, I was pleased to gather, from Las Cases’ nods & winks, that our appeal was going forward.
