This year partook not of any lack of incident; it commenced during the operation and incertitude of a public transaction so big, in its consequences, with deep importance to the domestic life of Dr. Burney, that it seems requisite for all that will follow, to enter into such parts of its details as affected the Doctor’s feelings, through their influence over those of his son-in-law, General d’Arblay. And it will be done the more willingly, as it must involve an unpublished anecdote or two of the marvellous character who, for a while, was the ruler of nearly all Europe,—Napoleon Buonaparte.

At the period of the peace of Amiens, in the preceding year, the Minister Plenipotentiary who was sent over by Buonaparte, then only First Consul, to sign its preliminaries, chanced to be an artillery officer, General de Lauriston, who had been en garrison, and in great personal friendship, with General d’Arblay, during their mutual youth; and with whom, as with all the etat major of the regiment of Toul, a connexion of warm esteem and intimacy had faithfully been kept alive, till the dreadful catastrophe of the 10th of August dispersed every officer who survived it, into the wanderings of emigration, or the mystery of concealment.

When the name of Lauriston reached West Hamble, its obscured, but not enervated Chief, rushed eagerly from his Hermitage to the Metropolis, where he hastily wrote a few impressive lines to the new Minister Plenipotentiary, briefly demanding whether or not, in his present splendid situation, he would avow an old Camarade, whose life now was principally spent in cultivating cabbages in his own garden, for his own family and table?

Of this note he was fain to be his own bearer; and in some Hotel in, or near St. James’s Street, he discovered the Minister’s abode.

Unaccoutred, dressed only in his common garden coat, and wearing no military appendage, or mark of military rank, he found it very difficult to gain admission into the hotel, even as a messenger; for such, only, he called himself. The street was crowded so as to be almost impassable, as it was known to the public, that the French Minister was going forth to an audience for signing the preliminaries of Peace with Lord Hawkesbury.[60]

But M. d’Arblay was not a man to be easily baffled. He resolutely forced his way to the corridor leading to the Minister’s dressing apartment. There, however, he was arbitrarily stopped; but would not retire: and compelled the lacquey, who endeavoured to dismiss him, to take, and to promise the immediate delivery of his note.

With a very wry face, and an indignant shrug, the lacquey almost perforce complied; carefully, however, leaving another valet at the outside of the door, to prevent further inroad.

M. de Lauriston was under the hands of his frizeur, and reading a newspaper. But the gazette gave place to the billet, which, probably recollecting the handwriting; he rapidly ran over, and then eagerly, and in a voice of emotion, emphatically demanded who had been its bearer?

A small ante-room alone separated him from its writer, who, hearing the question, energetically called out: “C’est Moi!”

Up rose the Minister, who opened one door himself, as M. d’Arblay broke through the other, and in the midst of the little ante-room, they rushed into one another’s arms.

If M. d’Arblay was joyfully affected by this generous reception, M. de Lauriston was yet more moved in embracing his early friend, whom report had mingled with the slaughtered of the 10th of August.

The meeting, indeed, was so peculiar, from the high station of M. de Lauriston; the superb equipage waiting at his door to carry him, for the most popular of purposes, to an appointed audience with a British minister; and the glare, the parade, the cost, the attendants, and the attentions by which he was encompassed; contrasted with the worn, as well as plain habiliments of the recluse of West Hamble, that it gave a singularity to the equality of their manners to each other, and the mutuality of the joy and affection of their embraces, that from first exciting the astonishment, next moved the admiration of the domestics of the Minister Plenipotentiary; and particularly of his frizeur, who, probably, was his first valet-de-chambre; and who, while they were yet in each other’s arms, exclaimed aloud, with that familiarity in which the French indulge their favourite servants, “Ma foi! voilÀ qui est beau!”

This characteristic freedom of approbation broke into the pathos of the interview by causing a hearty laugh; and M. de Lauriston, who then had not another instant to spare, cordially invited his recovered friend to breakfast with him the next morning.

At that breakfast, M. de Lauriston recorded the circumstances that had led to his present situation, with all the trust and openness of their early intercourse. And sacred General d’Arblay held that confidence; which should have sunk into oblivion, but for the after circumstances, and present state of things, which render all that, then, was prudentially secret, now desirably public.

No change, he said, of sentiment, no dereliction of principle, had influenced his entering into the service of the republic. Personal gratitude alone had brought about that event. Whilst fighting, under the banners of Austria, against Buonaparte, in one of the campaigns of Italy, he had been taken prisoner, with an Austrian troop. His companions in arms were immediately conveyed to captivity, there to stand the chances of confinement or exchange; but he, as a Frenchman, had been singled out by the conquerors, and stigmatized as a deserter, by the party into whose hands he had fallen, and who condemned him to be instantly shot: though, as he had never served Buonaparte, no laws of equity could brand as a traitor the man who had but constantly adhered to his first allegiance. Buonaparte himself, either struck by this idea; or with a desire to obtain a distinguished officer of artillery, of which alone his army wanted a supply; felt induced to start forward in person, to stop the execution at the very instant it was going to take place. And, to save M. de Lauriston, at the same time, from the ill-will or vengeance of the soldiers, Buonaparte concealed him, till the troop by which he had been taken was elsewhere occupied; conducting himself, in the meanwhile, with so much consideration and kindness, that the gentle heart of Lauriston was gained over by grateful feelings, and he accepted the post afterwards offered to him of Aide-de-camp to the First Consul; with whom, in a short time, he rose to so much trust and favour, as to become the colleague of Duroc, as a chosen and military,—though not, as Duroc, a confidential secretary.

Buonaparte, Lauriston said, had named him for this important embassy to England from two motives: one of which was, that he thought such a nomination might be agreeable to the English, as Lauriston, who was great grand-son or grand-nephew to the famous Law, of South Sea notoriety, was of British extraction; and the other was from personal regard to Lauriston, that he might open a negociation, during his mission, for the recovery of some part of his Scotch inheritance.

At this, and a subsequent breakfast with M. de Lauriston, M. d’Arblay discussed the most probable means for claiming his reforme, or half-pay, as some remuneration for his past services and deprivations. And M. de Lauriston warmly undertook to carry a letter on this subject to Buonaparte’s minister at war, Berthier; with whom, under Louis the Sixteenth, M. d’Arblay had formerly transacted military business.

It was found, however, that nothing could be effected without the presence of M. d’Arblay in France; and therefore, peace between the two nations being signed, he deemed it right to set sail for the long-lost land of his birth.

Immediately upon his arrival in Paris, a representation of his claims was presented to the First Consul himself, accompanied with words of kindliest interest in its success, by the faithful General de Lauriston.

Buonaparte inquired minutely into the merits of the case, and into the military character of the claimant; and, having patiently heard the first account, and eagerly interrogated upon the second, he paused a few minutes, and then said: “Let him serve in the army, if only for one year. Let him go to St. Domingo, and join Le Cler;[61] and, at the end of the year, he shall be allowed to retire, with rank and promotion.”

This was the last purpose that had entered into the projects of M. d’Arblay; yet, to a military spirit, jealous of his honour, and passionately fond of his profession, it was a proposition impossible to be declined. It was not to combat for Buonaparte, nor to fight against his original allegiance: it was to bear arms in the current cause of his country, in resisting the insurgents of St. Domingo,[62] against whom he might equally have been employed by the Monarch[63] in whose service he had risked, and through whose misfortunes he had lost his all. He merely, therefore, stipulated to re-enter the army simply as a volunteer; with an agreed permission to quit it at the close of the campaign, whatever might be its issue: and he then accepted from Berthier a commission for St. Domingo, which, in the republican language adopted by Buonaparte on his first accession to dictatorial power, was addressed to le Citoyen General-in-Chief, Le Cler; and which recommended to that General that le Citoyen Darblay should be employed as a distinguished artillery officer.

M. d’Arblay next obtained leave to come over to England to settle his private affairs; to make innumerable purchases relative to the expedition to St. Domingo; and to bid adieu to his wife and son.