To assert, however, that Napoleon’s escape from Elba was prompted by a desire to avoid bankruptcy, is to credit him with respectable bourgeois scruples by which he was never troubled.  Though “Madame Mere” and Pauline complained bitterly to Campbell of the lack of funds at Elba, the Emperor himself was far from depressed.  “His spirits seem of late,” wrote Campbell on December 28th, “rather to rise, and not to yield in the smallest degree to the pressure of pecuniary difficulties.”  Both Campbell and Lord John Russell, who then paid the Emperor a flying visit, thought that he was planning some great move, and warned our Ministers.[462] But they shared the view of other wiseacres, that Italy would be his goal, and that too, when Campbell’s despatches teemed with remarks made to him by Napoleon as to the certainty of an outbreak in France.  Here are two of them: 

He said that there would be a violent outbreak, similar to the Revolution, in consequence of their present humiliation:  every man in France considers the Rhine to be the natural frontier of France, and nothing can alter this opinion.  If the spirit of the nation is roused into action nothing can oppose it.  It is like a torrent....  The present Government of France is too feeble:  the Bourbons should make war as soon as possible so as to establish themselves upon the throne.  It would not be difficult to recover Belgium.  It is only for the British troops there that the French army has the smallest awe” (sic).

His final resolve to put everything to the hazard was formed about February 13th, when, shortly after receiving tidings as to the unrest in Italy, the discords of the Powers, and the resolve of the allied sovereigns to leave Vienna on the 20th, he heard news of the highest importance from France.  On that day one of his former officials, Fleury de Chaboulon, landed in Elba, and informed him of the hatching of a plot by military malcontents, under the lead of Fouche, for the overthrow of Louis XVIII.[463] Napoleon at once despatched his informant to Naples, and ordered his brig, “L’Inconstant,” to be painted like an English vessel.  Most fortunately for him, Campbell on the 16th set sail for Tuscany—­“for his health and on private affairs”—­on the small war-vessel, “Partridge,” to which the British Government had intrusted the supervision of Napoleon.  Captain Adye, of that vessel, promised, after taking Campbell to Leghorn, to return and cruise off Elba.  He called at Porto Ferrajo on the 24th, and to Bertrand’s question, when he was to bring Campbell back, returned the undiplomatic answer that it was fixed for the 26th.  The news seems to have decided Napoleon to escape on that day, when the “Partridge” would be absent at Leghorn.  Meanwhile Campbell, alarmed by the news of the preparations at Elba, was sending off a request to Genoa that another British warship should be sent to frustrate the designs of the “restless villain.”