the same
quiet contempt that Philip felt for the Athens of Demosthenes.

But while his prospects in Europe and the East were roseate, the
western horizon bulked threateningly with clouds. The news of the
disasters in St. Domingo reached Paris in the first week of the year
1803, and shortly afterwards came tidings of the ferment in the United
States and the determination of their people to resist the acquisition
of Louisiana by France. If he persevered with this last scheme, he
would provoke war with that republic and drive it into the arms of
England. From that blunder his statecraft instinctively saved him, and
he determined to sell Louisiana to the United States.

So unheroic a retreat from the prairies of the New World must be
covered by a demonstration towards the banks of the Nile and of the
Indus. It was ever his plan to cover retreat in one direction by
brilliant diversions in another: only so could he enthrall the
imagination of France, and keep his hold on her restless capital. And
the publication of Sebastiani's report, with its glowing description
of the fondness cherished for France alike by Moslems, Syrian
Christians, and the Greeks of Corfu; its declamation against the
perfidy of General Stuart; and its incitation to the conquest of the
Levant, furnished him with the motive power for effecting a telling
transformation scene and banishing all thoughts of losses in the
West.[243]

The official publication of this report created a sensation even in
France, and was not the _bagatelle_ which M. Thiers has endeavoured to
represent it.[244] But far greater was the astonishment at Downing
Street, not at the facts disclosed by the report--for Merry's note
had prepared our Ministers for them--but rather at the official avowal
of hostile designs. At once our Government warned Whitworth that he
must insist on our retaining Malta. He was also to protest against the
publication of such a document, and to declare that George III. could
not "enter into any further discussion relative to Malta until he
received a satisfactory explanation." Far from offering it, Napoleon
at once complained of our non-evacuation of Alexandria and Malta.

"Instead of that garrison [of Alexandria] being a means of
protecting Egypt, it was only furnishing him with a pretence
for invading it. This he should not do, whatever might be his
desire to have it as a colony, because he did not think it worth
the risk of a w