erdict of posterity; and there are signs
that his maturer convictions thenceforth strove to curb the old
domineering instincts that had wrecked his life.

Introspection, however, was alien to his being; he was made for the
camp rather than the study; his critical powers, if turned in for a
time on himself, quickly swung back to work upon men and affairs; and
they found the needed exercise in organizing his Liliputian Empire and
surveying the course of European politics. In the first weeks he was
up at dawn, walking or riding about Porto Ferrajo and its environs,
planning better defences, or tracing out new roads and avenues of
mulberry trees. "I have never seen a man," wrote Campbell, "with so
much activity and restless perseverance: he appears to take pleasure
in perpetual movement, and in seeing those who accompany him sink
under fatigue." About seven hundred of his Guards were brought over on
British transports; and these, along with Corsicans and Tuscans,
guarded him against royalist plotters, real or supposed. In a short
time he purchased a few small vessels, and annexed the islet of
Pianosa. These affairs and the formation of an Imperial Court for the
delectation of his mother and his sister Pauline, who now joined him,
served to drive away ennui; but he bitterly resented the Emperor
Francis's refusal to let his wife and son come to him. Whether Marie
Louise would have come is more than doubtful, for her relations to
Count Neipperg were already notorious; but the detention of his son
was a heartless action that aroused general sympathy for the lonely
man. The Countess Walewska paid him a visit for some days, bringing
the son whom she had borne him.[458]

Meanwhile Europe was settling down uneasily on its new political
foundations. Considering that France had been at the mercy of the
allies, she had few just grounds of complaint against them. The
Treaties of Paris (May 30th, 1814) left her with rather wider bounds
than those of 1791; and she kept the art treasures reft by Napoleon.
Perfidious Albion yielded up all her French colonial conquests, except
Mauritius, Tobago, and St. Lucia. Britons grumbled at the paltry gains
brought by a war that had cost more than L600,000,000: but Castlereagh
justified the policy of conciliation. "It is better," said he, "for
France to be commercial and pacific than a warlike and conquering
State." We insisted on her ceding Belgium to the House of Orange,
while we retained the Dutc