It was stated that the bust had been executed at Leghorn by order of the faithless Marie Louise.  In Hooper’s “Life of Wellington,” the statement that “she was grateful to the Duke for winning Waterloo, because in 1815 she had a lover who afterwards became her husband, and she was not in a condition to return with safety to her Imperial spouse,” is hard to believe.  This mother of the son the poet-Emperor sings about was deriving pleasure in playing cards for napoleons with the Duke who was regarded by her husband as one of his most determined executioners.  Her supposed connection with the statue naturally gave it a larger interest, so the Emperor expressed a desire to see the gunner, and ordered Bertrand to get permission for him to visit Longwood.

The Governor, after examining the gunner on oath, and having had him carefully searched, gave him leave to see Napoleon, but Captain Poppleton was ordered not to allow him to speak to the French unless in his presence.  This arbitrary condition was resented with quiet, scornful dignity, and the gunner was asked to withdraw.  It is hard to believe that a man could be so perversely crooked as Sir Hudson Lowe.  How human it was for the exile to long to hear a message from the lips of one who was credited with having seen and spoken to the mother of his son, and how inhuman of Lowe to put any obstacles in the way of his desire being gratified!

The incident became common talk, and in proportion to its circulation, so did Lowe’s reputation suffer.  It is questionable whether he could have found any one unfeeling enough on the island to justify so despicable an act, except perhaps Sir Thomas Reade, whose baseness in this and other transactions cannot be adequately described, and whose nature seems to have been ingrained with the daily thought of achieving distinction by excelling his master in some form of cruelty.

It is a piteous reflection to think of these two plants of grace, the one at all times imbued with the idea of some sanguinary plan of punishment, while the other varied the plan of his doubtful transactions, at the same time telling the exiles that he was actuated by the sweetest and purest of motives.

In contrast to Lowe and Reade, the chroniclers speak in the highest praise of Major Gorriquer.  The officers and soldiers of the garrison, as well as the men of the navy, extended their touching sympathy to the hero who described his imprisonment as being worse than “Tamerlane’s iron cage.”  Captain Maitland, in his narrative, relates a story which indicates the magnetic power of this great soldier.  Maitland was anxious to know what his men thought of Napoleon, so he asked his servant, who told him that he had heard several of them talking about him, and one of them had observed, “Well, they may abuse that man as much as they please; but if the people of England knew him as well as we do, they would not hurt a hair of his head.”  To which the others agreed.