The island, however, was his; and, as on the eye itself a very small object near at hand fills a much greater space than the largest which is distant, so, in the mind of Napoleon, that was always of most importance in which his personal interests happened for the time to be most concerned.  The island—­mountainous and rocky, for the most part barren, and of a circumference not beyond sixty miles—­was his; and the Emperor forthwith devoted to Elba the same anxious care and industry which had sufficed for the whole affairs of France, and the superintendence and control of half Europe besides.  He, in less than three weeks, had explored every corner of the island, and projected more improvements of all sorts than would have occupied a long lifetime to complete.  He even extended his empire by sending some dozen or two of his soldiers to take possession of a small adjacent islet, hitherto left unoccupied for fear of corsairs.  He established four different residences at different corners of Elba, and was continually in motion from one to another of them.  Wherever he was, in houses neither so large nor so well furnished as many English gentlemen are used to inhabit, all the etiquettes of the Tuileries were, as far as possible, adhered to; and Napoleon’s eight or nine hundred veterans were reviewed as frequently and formally as if they had been the army of Austerlitz or of Moscow.  His presence gave a new stimulus to the trade and industry of the islanders; the small port of Ferraio was crowded with vessels from the opposite coasts of Italy; and, such was still the power of his name, that the new flag of Elba (covered with Napoleon’s bees), traversed with impunity the seas most infested with the Moorish pirates.

Buonaparte’s eagerness as to architectural and other improvements was, ere long, however, checked in a manner sufficiently new to him—­namely, by the want of money.  The taxes of the island were summarily increased; but this gave rise to discontent among the Elbese, without replenishing at all adequately the Emperor’s exchequer.  Had the French government paid his pension in advance, or at least quarterly, as it fell due, even that would have borne a slender proportion to the demands of his magnificent imagination.  But Napoleon received no money whatever from the Bourbon court; and his complaints on this head were unjustly and unwisely neglected.  These new troubles embittered the spirit of the fallen Chief; and the first excitement of novelty being over he sank into a state of comparative indolence, and apparently of listless dejection; from which, however, he was, ere long, to be roused effectually, by the course of events in that great kingdom, almost in sight of whose shores he had been most injudiciously permitted to preserve the shadow of sovereign state.