In his despatches of February and April, 1821, he had mockingly referred to Napoleon’s indisposition as being faked, and in May he is obliged to write himself as an unscrupulous liar, but notwithstanding this, his action meets with the approval of the chief of the executioners, which is very natural, seeing that this person was regarded as one of the most prominent scoundrels in Europe.  But Sir Hudson Lowe craved for approbation, and was so mentally constituted that he believed he deserved it by committing offences against God and man.

“Every good servant does not all commands, no bond but to do just ones,” but Lowe, in his anxiety to please his employers, went to the furthest limits of injustice.  How void of human understanding and what Mrs. Carlyle called “that damned thing, human kindness” this wretched man was!

As will be hereafter shown, he had not long to wait after Napoleon’s death and the receipt of tokens of friendliness that had been sent to him through the Colonial Secretary, before he was made to feel that the Government was not disposed to carry any part of his public unpopularity on its shoulders.  He had done his best or worst to make that portion of the earth on which he lived miserable to those he might have made tolerably happy, without infringing the loutish instructions of a notoriously stupid Government.  Instead of this he made himself so despised that the Emperor, almost with his last breath, called all good spirits to bear witness against him and his murderous confederates.

The great soldier had slipped his moorings on May 6, 1821, and on the 7th or 8th, after much ado with the Governor, a post-mortem examination was held by Dr. Francois Antommarchi in the presence of Drs. Short, Arnott, Burton, and Livingstone.  Lowe was represented by the Chief of Staff.  The examination disclosed an ulcerous growth and an unnaturally enlarged liver, which may be assumed as the ultimate cause of death, though Antommarchi’s report assuredly points to the fatal nature of the climatic conditions.

The French were anxious to have the body of their Emperor embalmed, but Hudson Lowe insisted that his instructions forbade this.  Napoleon had commanded that his heart should be put in a silver vase filled with spirits of wine and sent to Marie Louise.  When Sir Hudson Lowe heard that this was being done, he sent a peremptory order forbidding it, stating that no part should be preserved but the stomach, which would be sent to England.  Naturally such wanton disregard of the Emperor’s wish was violently resented by the French, and by the best of the English who were there.  A long and heated discussion seems to have ensued on this question, which ended in the Governor having to give way—­not altogether—­but he was compelled to a compromise, viz., that the heart and stomach should be preserved and put into the coffin.