The interest attaching to the foregoing interview betwixt Napoleon and the gentlemen sent to announce his doom, loses much, when we regard it in a great measure as an empty personification of feeling, a well-painted passion which was not in reality felt. Napoleon, as will presently appear, was not serious in averring that he had any encouragement from Captain Maitland to come on board his ship, save in the character of a prisoner, to be placed at the Prince Regent's discretion. Neither had he the most distant idea of preventing his removal to the Northumberland, either by violence to himself or any one else. Both topics of declamation were only used for show--the one to alarm the sense of honour entertained by the Prince Regent and the people of England, and the other to work upon their humanity. [Sidenote: THE BELLEROPHON.] There is little doubt that Napoleon saw the probability of the St. Helena voyage, so soon as he surrendered himself to the captain of the Bellerophon.[192] He had affirmed, that there was a purpose of transferring him to St. Helena or St. Lucie, even before he left Elba; and if he thought the English capable of sending him to such banishment while he was under the protection of the treaty of Fontainbleau, he could hardly suppose that they would scruple to execute such a purpose, after his own conduct had deprived him of all the immunities with which that treaty had invested him. Nevertheless, while aware that his experiment might possibly thus terminate, Napoleon may have hoped a better issue, and conceived himself capable of cajoling the Prince Regent[193] and his administration into hazarding the safety and the peace of Europe, in order to display a Quixotic generosity towards an individual, whose only plea for deserving it was that he had been for twenty years their mortal enemy. Such hopes he may have entertained; for it cannot be thought that he would acknowledge even to himself the personal disqualifications which rendered him, in the eyes of all Europe, unworthy of trust or confidence. His expectation of a favourable reception did not go so far, in all likelihood, as those of the individual among his followers, who believed that Napoleon would receive the Order of the Garter from the Prince Regent; but he might hope to be permitted to reside in Britain on the same terms as his brother Lucien had done.