By this time our courteous host had accompanied us back to the inner gateway; and so, taking leave of him, we left that terrible artificial world, over which, with a hush still greater than that of the sea and sky and mountain, broods the awful presence of unknown crime terribly expiated. THE FIRST STEP OF A MIGHTY FALL “_Le premier degré d’une chute profonde_,” says Victor Hugo, speaking of Elba in connection with Napoleon. And it is impossible to remain in the island long without conjuring up the figure of the fallen prince hurrying hither and thither with one or two attendants, building his villa, enquiring into the agricultural and mineral wealth of his new kingdom, collecting his taxes and his customs duties, strengthening his fortifications, holding the tiny court of which the people of Portoferraio were so inordinately proud, carrying on his _amours_, chatting with the peasants and the proprietors—and under the mask of all this activity enlisting men, collecting stores, conducting a continuous secret correspondence with Naples, with Corsica, with France, undecided whether to make himself King of Italy or to go back to be Emperor of the French. Elba, towering above her satellites Pianosa, Monte Cristo, S. Stefano, Giglio, with the rocky islet of Palmaiola as sentinel in the very narrow channel towards Piombino, is an excellent place to plot in, and a very difficult place to watch. Napoleon, as was but natural, took in the advantages of his position at a glance. He had hardly arrived in Elba before he claimed the neighbouring islands as part of his domain, and began to establish outposts on them. Thus he surrounded himself with a barrier within which no foreign ship could penetrate without violating the independence secured to him by the Treaty of Fontainebleau; and which at the same time afforded him a valid excuse for short sea-trips and for a constant movement of small vessels eminently adapted to conceal secret negotiations of every kind, and especially his intercourse with Corsica. In this most favourable position, shut off from prying eyes by diplomacy and nature combined, within easy communicating distance on the one hand of Tuscany and of Murat, on the other of Corsica and France, Napoleon remained from May 4th, 1814, to February 26th, 1815. With his political intrigues during that time we do not propose to concern ourselves, nor with the vexed question raised by some disappointed Frenchmen, who seem to have understood neither the Treaty of Fontainebleau nor the geography of Elba, as to England’s complicity in his escape; rather we would picture him in the places with which we too are familiar, would shadow him forth not as the banished Emperor of France, but as Monarch of Elba.