The Drama at Saint Helen Island (Excerpts)
by André Castelot; Editions Perrin
(Translated from the French by Simon Dray)
At dawn on May 5th, the weather is beautiful. We run up the signal announcing at Plantation House: “General Bonaparte is in critical condition.” Hudson Lowe rushes up.
He wants to wait for the end at Longwood.
Upon his arrival, he is informed that his prisoner has lost all consciousness.
The sun streams in the salon. The Emperor does not move, not even to chase the flies
that were disturbing him for the past few days...Slowly all the French fill the room...
(They came to see Napoleon die)...Livid face, eyes half open, he stirs at the end of the bed...
His right hand, inert and sweaty hangs along the sheet...
He is only a dying man whose rattles are broken by the hollow sound of the groaning agony...By 7:30 he passes out, but life comes back. 8:00, a tear appears below his left eye,
and slowly runs down his cheek...Bertrand wipes it.All day the last supporters, joined by Arnott, Bertrand’s children,
and the wives of some of the French servants, all together 16 people,
are keeping their eyes on the waxy face that became emaciated, whose features
will slowly resemble those of General Bonaparte. Only the ticking clock breaks the silence.
By the end of the afternoon, breathing is short and difficult.
Napoleon is giving himself up now, slowly, very slowly sliding towards his death.
At the moment when the sun disappears behind the ocean, the breathing stops.
Antommarchi touches the jugular vein and nods his head. Someone gets up and stops the clock.It is 5:49 a.m. on May 5th 1821.
Without holding their tears any longer, they go, one by one to kiss the finality of the deceased.
Lowe, his staff, and the useless Montchenu, representative of Louis XVIII,
and whom Napoleon always refused to see, took a bow, heels joined,
before the body placed between the two windows of the salon, the exact spot where he died.
--“ Do you recognize him? Asks the Governor to the Marquis, in an undertone
-- Yes, I recognize him...The autopsy ended, the plaster cast of the face taken somehow,
dressed in the legendary uniform of Colonel of the Horsemen, sword on the side,
a crucifix on his chest, lying down on a camp bed.
The face has a surprising beauty. “In death,” says the English Sortt,
“his face was the most splendid I could ever contemplate; like if it had been shaped to conquer”
The inhabitants of the island, officers, soldiers of the outpost came by all day long.
Many fell on their knees, and with their thumb do the sign of the cross on the Emperor’s forehead.
A warrant officer comes closer, holding a child by his hand, and whispers:
“Come, come and see the great man: The Great Napoleon”In Vienna, following the announcement of Napoleon’s death, the tax is raised 2 thalers.
The prisoner of England, the little corporal, nailed by cancer on his iron bed,
still had the world shaking before him.
