[wrong] ELBA, A HUNDRED YEARS AFTER 215 



The piety of an earlier age has erected a dozen little stone shelters at 

 regular intervals along the route. Once they held crosses and were 

 places for devotion; but now the crosses and the prayers have alike 

 ceased to be, a sign perhaps of the spirit of this age. The end of the 

 walk is at a chapel in honour of the virgin. Close to the chapel is a 

 long stone dwelling of four or five rooms. This is the Hermitage. 

 The "hermit" is an old man, dwelling here with his wife, caring for the 

 chapel and living on the alms of visitors. 



Hither came Napoleon for a part of August and September, 

 1814. It is a wild and rugged spot. To supplement the rooms in the 

 Hermitage he brought with him military tents and they were put up 

 on the few patches of ground not cumbered with granite boulders, 

 There was always work to be done when Napoleon was about. He had , 

 after all, a little realm to rule and messengers were coming and going 

 all the time that he was here. Many letters written from "La Ma- 

 done" have been preserved in his Correspondence. Some of them are 

 long and minute in regard to petty details of administration; all 

 show a perfect clearness of intellect and an eye that saw everything, 

 big and little. The opinion that, by this time, disease had undermined 

 Napoleon's powers is surely unfounded; no intelligence could have 

 been more alert and fruitful than his appeared to be in Elba. His 

 activity even at La Madone was ceaseless. He went out shooting on 

 these rugged heights ; he visited spots of interest in the neighbourhood ; 

 he superintended the planting of trees. Though he was not much 

 given to introspection, one thing here was likely to call up memories. 

 A few hundred yards beyond La Madone the stony path comes to the 

 high point on Mount Capanne where the view to the west is unbroken. 

 There, forty miles away, lies the long, high, sombre mass of the island 

 of Corsica. I saw it when it was misty and black in the distance. 

 Napoleon must have looked upon it when its lofty peaks, rising eight 

 thousand feet from the sea, were gleaming in the sunlight. It was less 

 than twenty years since "the whiff of grape shot" directed against the 

 Church of St. Roch in Paris had brought him fame. Assuredly he 

 had been the chief actor in amazing scenes since Corsica had ceased 

 to be his home. 



The two members of Napoleon's family who came to live in Elba 

 were singularly different in type. His mother Madame Mère had 

 remained at heart the member of a Corsican clan with clannish feelings 

 like those sometimes shown by a Highland Scot. She was a majestic 

 and rather terrible person in demeanour, a veritable mother of him 

 who had made himself a king of kings. Visitors stood in even greater 

 awe of her than of the Emperor. Napoleon furnished her with a 



