eon was equally unbending: summoning him on April
11th, he said:

"Irresolution and deliberation are no longer in season. I renounce
Louisiana. It is not only New Orleans that I cede: it is the whole
colony, without reserve; I know the price of what I abandon. I have
proved the importance I attach to this province, since my first
diplomatic act with Spain had the object of recovering it. I
renounce it with the greatest regret: to attempt obstinately to
retain it would be folly. I direct you to negotiate the
affair."[204]

After some haggling with Monroe, the price agreed on for this
territory was 60,000,000 francs, the United States also covenanting to
satisfy the claims which many of their citizens had on the French
treasury. For this paltry sum the United States gained a peaceful
title to the debatable lands west of Lake Erie and to the vast tracts
west of the Mississippi. The First Consul carried out his threat of
denying to the deputies of France any voice in this barter. The war
with England sufficed to distract their attention; and France turned
sadly away from the western prairies, which her hardy sons had first
opened up, to fix her gaze, first on the Orient, and thereafter on
European conquests. No more was heard of Louisiana, and few references
were permitted to the disasters in St. Domingo; for Napoleon abhorred
any mention of a _coup manque_, and strove to banish from the
imagination of France those dreams of a trans-Atlantic Empire which
had drawn him, as they were destined sixty years later to draw his
nephew, to the verge of war with the rising republic of the New World.
In one respect, the uncle was more fortunate than the nephew. In
signing the treaty with the United States, the First Consul could
represent his conduct, not as a dexterous retreat from an impossible
situation, but as an act of grace to the Americans and a blow to
England. "This accession of territory," he said, "strengthens for ever
the power of the United States, and I have just given to England a
maritime rival that sooner or later will humble her pride."[205]

* * * * *

In the East there seemed to be scarcely the same field for expansion
as in the western hemisphere. Yet, as the Orient had ever fired the
imagination of Napoleon, he was eager to expand the possessions of
France in the Indian Ocean. In October, 1801, these amounted to the
Isle of Bourbon and th