Santini was the only one who refused to sign a document put forward by Lowe in which all the officers and domestics pledged themselves to conform to the new regulations, which were, as usual, senseless and severe.  They insisted on the words “Emperor Napoleon” being inserted, but Lowe, with inherent stupid pleasure, would have none other than the words “Napoleon Bonaparte,” and the penalty for refusing to sign was banishment from the island.  Sir Hudson got it into his malevolent brain that he had pinned them at last.  He affirmed that their reason for not signing what they pretended was their Emperor’s and their own degradation was to give an excuse for being “sent off.”  Whereupon, as soon as the Governor’s crafty insinuations became known, they all signed except Santini, who refused to have Napoleon described by any other term than that of Emperor.

Santini’s loyalty to his illustrious master cost him the anguish of being torn from his service and sent to the Cape of Good Hope in the English frigate Orontes.  He stayed there a few days, but returned almost immediately to St. Helena.  He was not, however, allowed to land; and, having spent some days at the anchorage, sailed on February 25, 1817, for England.

These refractory captives of the British authorities seem to have been a source of great perplexity to them, to say nothing of the cost to the nation caused by the hopeless incapacity displayed in dealing with them.  The business grows so farcical that the English guardians become the laughing-stock of the most menial creatures on the island.

Immediately on his arrival in London Santini issued a touching appeal to the British people, laying naked the St. Helena atrocities, the main facts of which have never been contradicted.  Any exaggerations which may appear in the pamphlet, coming as they do from a soldier whose adoration for his Emperor amounted to fanaticism, may be excused; but, whatever his faults, the ugly facts remain unshaken.

There is no evidence in all the voluminous publications concerning Napoleon at St. Helena that there would have been a shred of mourning put on by the best men and women of any nationality residing on this inhospitable rock had Santini or any one else despatched the petty tyrant who was carrying on a nefarious assassination by the consent, if not the instructions, of an equally nefarious Ministry.  Perhaps his Imperial victim would have been the only person outside his family and official circle who would have deplored the act.  It is pretty generally admitted that Lowe was detested by all classes who knew of the villainous methods adopted by him to give pain to Napoleon and to any one who showed the slightest sympathy towards him.