This violation of the Law of Nations and of the respect due to hospitality was revolting. If you see the light on board of any ship, provided it be _under sail_, you are _English born_; by virtue of the old London customs, the _waves_ are considered _soil of Albion._ And an English ship was not an inviolable altar for a supplicant, it did not place the great man who embraced the poop of the _Bellerophon_ under the protection of the British trident! Bonaparte protested; he argued about laws, talked of treachery and perfidy, appealed to the future: did that become him? Had he not laughed at justice? Had he not, in his might, trampled under foot the sacred things whose guarantee he now invoked? Had he not carried off Toussaint-Louverture[367] and the King of Spain[368]? Had he not had English travellers arrested who happened to be in France at the time of the rupture of the Peace of Amiens, and kept them prisoners for years? Allowable therefore to mercantile England to imitate what he had done himself, and to use ignoble reprisals; but they might have acted differently. With Napoleon, the size of the heart did not correspond with the width of the head: his quarrels with the English are deplorable; they revolt Lord Byron. How could he condescend to honour his gaolers with a word? One suffers at seeing him stoop to wordy conflicts with Lord Keith at Torbay, with Sir Hudson Lowe[369] at St. Helena, publish statements because they break faith with him, cavil about a title, about a little more, or a little less, gold or honours. Bonaparte, reduced to himself, was reduced to his glory, and that ought to suffice him: he had nothing to ask of men; he did not treat adversity despotically enough; one would have pardoned him for making of misfortune his last slave. I find nothing remarkable in his protest against the violation of hospitality, save the date and signature of that protest: "On board the _Bellerophon_, at sea. "NAPOLEON." There are harmonies of immensity. From the _Bellerophon_ Bonaparte crossed on to the Northumberland. Two frigates laden with the future garrison of St. Helena escorted him. Some of the officers of that garrison had fought at Waterloo. They permitted that explorer of the globe to keep with him M. and Madame Bertrand, Messieurs de Montholon[370], Gourgaud and de Las Cases[371], voluntary and generous passengers on the submerged plank. By one clause in the captain's instructions, "Bonaparte must be disarmed:" Napoleon alone, a prisoner on board ship, in the midst of the Ocean, "disarmed[372]!" What a magnificent terror of his power! But what a lesson from Heaven to men who abuse the sword! The stupid Admiralty treated the great convict of the human race as a Botany-Bay felon: did the Black Prince "disarm" King John?