d have none other than
the words "Napoleon Bonaparte," and the penalty for refusing to sign
was banishment from the island. Sir Hudson got it into his malevolent
brain that he had pinned them at last. He affirmed that their reason
for not signing what they pretended was their Emperor's and their own
degradation was to give an excuse for being "sent off." Whereupon, as
soon as the Governor's crafty insinuations became known, they all
signed except Santini, who refused to have Napoleon described by any
other term than that of Emperor.

Santini's loyalty to his illustrious master cost him the anguish of
being torn from his service and sent to the Cape of Good Hope in the
English frigate _Orontes_. He stayed there a few days, but returned
almost immediately to St. Helena. He was not, however, allowed to
land; and, having spent some days at the anchorage, sailed on February
25, 1817, for England.

These refractory captives of the British authorities seem to have
been a source of great perplexity to them, to say nothing of the cost
to the nation caused by the hopeless incapacity displayed in dealing
with them. The business grows so farcical that the English guardians
become the laughing-stock of the most menial creatures on the island.

Immediately on his arrival in London Santini issued a touching appeal
to the British people, laying naked the St. Helena atrocities, the
main facts of which have never been contradicted. Any exaggerations
which may appear in the pamphlet, coming as they do from a soldier
whose adoration for his Emperor amounted to fanaticism, may be
excused; but, whatever his faults, the ugly facts remain unshaken.

There is no evidence in all the voluminous publications concerning
Napoleon at St. Helena that there would have been a shred of mourning
put on by the best men and women of any nationality residing on this
inhospitable rock had Santini or any one else despatched the petty
tyrant who was carrying on a nefarious assassination by the consent,
if not the instructions, of an equally nefarious Ministry. Perhaps his
Imperial victim would have been the only person outside his family and
official circle who would have deplored the act. It is pretty
generally admitted that Lowe was detested by all classes who knew of
the villainous methods adopted by him to give pain to Napoleon and to
any one who showed the slightest sympathy towards him.

Letters from and to his wife, "the amiable Austrian Archduchess