gain closed. No boy ever came on the earthly stage amid such
splendors, or seemed destined to honors such as appeared to await this
one. The devotion of the father was passionate and unwavering. It
lasted even after he had been deserted and betrayed by the mother,
after the child had been estranged and turned into an Austrian prince.

CHAPTER XXIV

TENSION BETWEEN EMPEROR AND CZAR[39]

[Footnote 39: References: Bernhardi, Geschichte Russlands,
II. Ranke, Hardenberg u. Preussen (vol. 48 of his complete
works, 1879). Lefebvre, Histoire des Cabinets de l'Europe.
Vandal, Napoleon et Alexandre Ier, parts of Vols. II and
III.]

Menaces of War -- Napoleon's "Extraordinary Domain" -- Rupture of
the Concordat -- The Prospect of War -- The Empire Prepared for a
Commercial Siege -- Napoleon's Self-deception -- The Empires of
Ocean and Continent -- The Czar's Humiliation -- Poland and the
French Empire -- Alexander's Approach to Francis -- Spurious
Negotiations.

[Sidenote: 1811]

Among other bodies which sent deputations to congratulate the Emperor
on the birth of his child was the Paris Chamber of Commerce. Their
address was sufficiently adulatory, but it contained a suggestion that
the trade and commerce of the country were not all that could be
desired. Napoleon replied in language which attracted attention
throughout Europe. There was some irritability in his tone, but there
was an unqualified assurance with regard to the future. He said, among
other things, that England was depressed. This was true; the new
measures taken to enforce the Continental system had told. British
harbors were glutted with the products of all the colonies--not only
of her own, but of those she had seized during the Napoleonic wars.
The storehouses could hold no more; and as colonial trade was
conducted by barter, all the products of English industry must remain
at home for lack of an export market. Business was at a standstill,
and the specter of English bankruptcy stalked abroad. As to France,
the Emperor declared that he was in no sense the successor of either
Louis XIV or Louis XV, but of Charles the Great; for the present
Empire was but the continuation of the old Frankish dominion. In four
years, he said in substance, I shall have a navy. When my fleets shall
have been three or four years at sea we can hold our own with the
English. I know I may lose three