THE EMPEROR NAPOLEON "INTERVIEWED."

Grey River Argus, Volume XII, Issue 1071, 3 January 1872, Page 3

THE EMPEROR NAPOLEON "INTERVIEWED."

Tie practice of "interviewing" is, it appears, being introduced into Eugland. Two Wept of England papers have lately published accounts of interviews between their reporters and the Emperor Napoleon, and lately the Tims published, in French and English,, a^report of some observations made by. the Emperor to a gentleman who called n£K>n him at Qhiselhurat on Sunday, and wnotfas "authorised to publish the result'of the interview." According to this

statement, the Emperor said he did not believe the report that the Bonapartists are conspiring, and that when a man, as he had been, during twenty-three years at the head cf a great nation, and when he had been animated by. a single thought— the welfare of the country — he preserved the sentiment of his dignity, the conviction of his rights, and cast away from him the low intrigues which degrade those who have recourse to them. "Without allusions and without discouragement," he relied upon the justice of the French people, and he was resigned to his fate, whatever might be the decrees of Providence. His Majesty added that to all who had, come from France to visit him he had held the same language. "I am opposed, I have said to them, to either intrigues or plots. France needs repose to enable her to recover from her disasters. He would be most culpable who should seek to foment trouble for the advancement of his personal interests. The present Government is merely provisional, and does not in the future exclude any form of government. To attempt to overthrow it would be a bad action ; though my rights still remain intact, and so long as the people Bhall not have been regularly consulted, no decision of the Chamber can prevent me from being the legitimate Sovereign of France." " Like the man in

Horace," the Emperor said, "I wraj)' "myself in my right and my resignation. Strong in my own conscience, I restrain the impatience of some and despise the treachery and the Hsult of others. I observe, with a certain degree of satisfaction, that the Republic is forced to act with severity against the men who, during twenty-three years, attacked my Government, and to adopt many of the measures which I regarded as indispensable to the maintenance of order ; but, as lam not a man of party, this feeling. gives place, in my heart to another and> a stronger— the pain with which I see the destinies of France /delivered over to the hazard of events, the fury of factions, the weakness of the men in power, and the exactness of the foreigner.*' In reference to the publication ' of the letters addressed to him by M. Lessines, the Emperor said he believed they were authentic, but they had nover received from him any serious notice ; indeed, he believed the man to be a sort of harmless lunatic.