There are many instances recorded where sailors ran the risk of being shot in order that they might get a glimpse of him, and there is little doubt the poor gunner-messenger was subjected to inimitable moral lectures on the sin and pains and penalties of having any communication whatsoever with the ungentle inhabitants of Longwood.  This good-hearted fellow was as carefully shadowed as though he had been commissioned to carry the Emperor off.  Lowe was infected with the belief that he had some secret designs, and if he were not kept under close supervision he might take to sauntering on his own account and really have some talk with the French, and then what might happen?  This episode was brought to a close by the Emperor directing that a kind letter should be written to the enterprising sailor, and that a draft for L300 should be enclosed.  O’Meara says, “By means of some unworthy trick he did not receive it for nearly two years.”

The reason so much is made of the bust affair is accounted for as follows:—­

Lowe, on first hearing of it being landed, intended to have it seized and thrown into the sea.  He afterwards took possession of the article, with the idea of making Napoleon a present of it himself.  This idea did not pan out as he expected, and in consequence of public indignation running so high, he had the bust sent to Longwood immediately after his conversation with Bertrand.  While Las Cases was waiting at Mannheim in the hope that the pathetic appeals he had made to the sovereigns on behalf of Napoleon would bring to him a favourable decision, the Dalmatian gunner heard of him.  He was passing through Germany to his home after a fruitless attempt in London to get the money Napoleon had enclosed in his letter.  The reason given was that the persons on whom it was drawn were not then in possession of the necessary funds.  Las Cases paid him, and received his appropriate blessings for his goodness.  Imprecations against Lowe were lavishly bestowed by the gunner.  He had been prevented from landing at St. Helena on his way back from India, and but for this spiteful act of Lowe’s the money would have been paid at once.

Meanwhile the touching appeals of Las Cases to the sovereigns were unheeded.  Even Napoleon’s father-in-law, the Emperor of Austria, who had given his daughter in marriage to the arbiter of Europe, did not deign to reply, though only a brief time before he had received many tokens of magnanimity from the French Emperor.  So, indeed, had other kings and queens of that time, not excluding Alexander of Russia; but more hereafter about these monarchs who had once clamoured for the honour of alliances with Napoleon and with his family, but who now were conspirators in the act of a great assassination.