his paper, dipped his pen in the ink, and
waited.

"Ready?" asked the First Consul, sitting down upon the writing table,
which was another of his habits; a habit that reduced his secretary to
despair, for Bonaparte never ceased swinging himself back and forth all
the time he dictated--a motion that shook the table as much as if it had
been in the middle of the ocean with a heaving sea.

"I'm ready," replied Bourrienne, who had ended by forcing himself to
endure, with more or less patience, all Bonaparte's eccentricities.

"Then write." And he dictated:

Bonaparte, First Consul of the Republic, to his Majesty the King
of Great Britain and Ireland.

Called by the will of the French nation to the chief magistracy
of the Republic, I think it proper to inform your Majesty
personally of this fact.

Must the war, which for two years has ravaged the four quarters
of the globe, be perpetuated? Is there no means of staying it?

How is it that two nations, the most enlightened of Europe,
more powerful and strong than their own safety and
independence require; how is it that they sacrifice to their
ideas of empty grandeur or bigoted antipathies the welfare
of commerce, eternal prosperity, the happiness of families?
How is it that they do not recognize that peace is the first
of needs and the first of a nation's glories?

These sentiments cannot be foreign to the heart of a king who
governs a free nation with the sole object of rendering it happy.

Your Majesty will see in this overture my sincere desire to
contribute efficaciously, for the second time, to a general
pacification, by an advance frankly made and free of those
formalities which, necessary perhaps to disguise the dependence
of feeble states, only disclose in powerful nations a mutual
desire to deceive.

France and England can, for a long time yet, by the abuse of
their powers, and to the misery of their people, carry on the
struggle without exhaustion; but, and I dare say it, the fate
of all the civilized nations depends on the conclusion of a
war which involves the universe.

Bonaparte paused. "I think that will do," said he. "Read it over,
Bourrienne."

Bourrienne read the letter he had just written. After each paragraph the
First Consul nodded approvingly; and said: "Go on."

Before the last words were fairly uttered, he took the letter from
Bourrienne's hands and signed it with a new pen. It wa