highly conducive to the success of my plans. I will try to bring it
about by all the means at my disposal, and accomplish my purpose. Hence,
I will even go in person to Warsaw to fan the enthusiasm of the Poles."

"Sire," said Talleyrand, "that will be throwing down the gauntlet to the
Austrian government, and if it intends to preserve its Polish provinces,
it will have to take it up."

"We must take care that Austria does not regard as a gauntlet the bone
that I mean to throw to the Poles," said Napoleon. "You will instruct my
ambassador at Vienna to dispel carefully all such suppositions and
apprehensions, by repairing to the Emperor of Austria and assuring him
that I do not intend to fulfil the promises which I am making to the
Poles; that, on the contrary, in case a rising should take place in
Poland, I will take care not to let it reach Galicia, but to confine it
to the Polish provinces of Russia and Prussia, provided the Emperor
Francis maintain his present neutrality. Send instructions to-day to
this effect to my minister in Vienna. And now I will receive the
ambassadors."

"Whom will your majesty admit first?"

"Introduce in the first place the gentlemen from Hesse," said Napoleon,
entering the small reception-room contiguous to his cabinet. Talleyrand
crossed this room and entered the adjoining audience-hall, in which the
plenipotentiaries had already waited for an hour. He beckoned the two
ambassadors of Hesse to approach, and introduced them, by virtue of his
position as minister of foreign affairs, into the reception-room, where
the emperor was waiting for them.

"Sire," he said, "the ambassadors of the Elector of Hesse." Napoleon
returned only a careless nod to their deep obeisances, and went to meet
them.

"I admire the Elector of Hesse, because he dares to remind me of
himself," said the emperor, sternly. "He has been intriguing against me
too long to suppose that I would deal leniently with him. I formerly
made friendly offers to him, and requested him to join the Confederation
of the Rhine. Then it was time for him to prove his friendship and
attachment to me, and to stand by me as a faithful ally. But at that
time he still hoped that I would succumb in the struggle with Prussia;
the tirades of the officers of the Prussian guard resounded in his ears
like the music of a triumph already obtained over me, and drowned the
voice of France. But he would not side openly with Prussia either; he
would re