(All Europe will say I have already made a conquest). The cause of the
island of Pianosa being left uninhabited was the marauding of the
Corsairs from the coast of Barbary, against whom Bonaparte considered
himself fully protected by the 4th Article of the Treaty of
Fontainebleau.

The greatest wealth of Elba consists in its iron mines, for which the
island was celebrated in the days of Virgil. Soon after his arrival
Napoleon visited the mines in company with Colonel Campbell, and being
informed that they produced annually about 500,000 francs he exclaimed
joyfully, "These, then, are my own !" One of his followers, however,
reminded him that he had long since disposed of that revenue, having
given it to his order of the Legion of Honour, to furnish pensions, etc.
"Where was my head when I made that grant?" said he, "but I have made
many foolish decrees of that sort!"

Sir Walter Scott, in telling a curious fact, makes a very curious
mistake. "To dignify his capital," he says, "having discovered that the
ancient name of Porto-Ferrajo was Comopoli (the city of Como), he
commanded it to be called Cosmopoli, or the city of all nations." Now
the old name of Porto-Ferrajo was in reality not Comopoli, but Cosmopoli,
and it obtained that name from the Florentine Cosmo de' Medici, to whose
ducal house Elba belonged, as an integral part of Tuscany. The name
equally signified the city of Cosmo, or the city of all nations, and the
vanity of the Medici had probably been flattered by the double meaning of
the appellation. But Bonaparte certainly revived the old name, and did
not add a letter to it to dignify his little capital.

The household of Napoleon, though reduced to thirty-five persons, still
represented an Imperial Court. The forms and etiquette of the Tuileries