Europe sewn up
in a waistcoat: one of them was a long letter to Lucien Bonaparte. The
servant showed the letters to his father, who in some alarm revealed
the matter to the Governor. It is curious as illustrating the state of
suspicion then prevalent at St. Helena, that Las Cases accused the
Scotts of being tools of the Governor; that Lowe saw in the affair the
frayed end of a Longwood scheme; while the residents there suspected
Las Cases of arranging matters as a means of departure from the
island. There was much to justify this last surmise. Las Cases and his
son were unwell; their position in the household was very
uncomfortable; and for a skilled intriguer to intrust an important
letter to a slave, who was already in the Governor's black books, was
truly a singular proceeding. Besides, after the arrest, when the
Governor searched Las Cases' papers in his presence, they were found
to be in good order, among them being parts of his "Journal." Napoleon
himself thought Las Cases guilty of a piece of extraordinary folly,
though he soon sought to make capital out of the arrest by comparing
the behaviour of our officers and their orderlies with "South Sea
savages dancing around a prisoner that they are about to devour."[579]
After a short detention at Ross Cottage, _when he declined the
Governor's offer that he should return to Longwood_, the secretary was
sent to the Cape, and thence made his way to France, where a judicious
editing of his "Memoirs" and "Journal" gained for their compiler a
rich reward.

Gourgaud is the next to leave. The sensitive young man has long been
tormented by jealousy. His diary becomes the long-drawn sigh of a
generous but vain nature, when soured by real or fancied neglect.
Though often unfair to Napoleon, whose egotism the slighted devotee
often magnifies into colossal proportions, the writer unconsciously
bears witness to the wondrous fascination that held the little Court
in awe. The least attention shown to the Montholons costs "Gogo" a fit
of spleen or a sleepless night, scarcely to be atoned for on the
morrow by soothing words, by chess, or reversi, or help at the
manuscript of "Waterloo." Again and again Napoleon tries to prove to
him that the Montholons ought to have precedence: it is in vain. At
last the crisis comes: it is four years since the General saved the
Emperor from a Cossack's lance at Brienne, and the recollection
renders his present "humiliations" intolerable. He challenge