, who acted
alternately traitor and devoted friend. Gourgaud alone seems to have
had a mania for sinning and repenting, writing down during his
childish fits of temper about his supposed wrongs on his shirtcuffs,
and not infrequently his finger-nails, some nasty remark or some
slanderous thoughts about the man whose amiable consideration for him
was notorious amongst the circle at Longwood, and even at Plantation
House. These scribblings were intended for precise entry in his diary,
and if the peevish temper lasted until he got at this precious book,
down they went in rancorous haste.

Yet this hot-headed, jealous chronicler, guided by blind passion and
never by reason while these moods were on him, has been held up as an
authority that may be relied upon as to the doings and sayings of
Napoleon and his immediate followers at the "Abode of Darkness." It is
a well-known axiom that persons who speak or write anything while
jealousy or temper holds them in its grip may not be counted as
reliable people to follow, and that is exactly what happened in
Gourgaud's case. He was the Peter of the band of disciples at St.
Helena, and it may be considered fairly reasonable to assume that
those who have written up the General as a sound historian have done
so with a view to backing up prejudices, big or small, against the
Emperor.

But surely they have committed a very grave error in singling out as
their hero of veracity a man who, in his more normal and charitable
moods, pours out praise and pity for his Imperial chief in astonishing
profusion.

O'Meara's position was very different from any of the other diarists
or writers. He was well aware that if he wrote an honest history it
meant his complete ruin, yet he faced it, and defied the world to
controvert his statements. "In face of the world," he says, "I
challenge investigation," and "investigation" was made with a
vengeance worthy of the Inquisition. If a word or a sentence could by
any possible means be made to appear faulty, a scream of denunciation
was sent forth from one end of Europe to the other, but the crime had
sunk too deeply into the hearts of an outraged public for these
ebullitions to have any real effect. There might be flaws in diction
and even matters of fact, but the sordid reality of the documentary
and verbal story that came to them was never doubted. The big heart of
the British nation was beginning to be moved in sympathy towards the
martyr long before