sixty thousand men, in return for one and a third million pounds, and
for the care of English vessels in her harbors she was to receive a
further sum of half a million. Great Britain and Russia were in
conjunction to emit an issue of paper money to the amount of five
millions sterling, and this loan was to be guaranteed by England,
Prussia, and Russia conjointly. In conclusion it was solemnly
stipulated that neither Russia nor Great Britain should negotiate
separately with France.

In view of the successive stages of Napoleon's isolation,--namely, the
armistice, these two subsidy treaties, and the secret treaty of June
twenty-seventh signed at Reichenbach,--it seems futile to discuss the
question whether or not Napoleon really wished peace in his famous
interview with Metternich on June twenty-seventh--an interview which
lasted from a quarter before twelve at midday until nearly nine at
night, and has improperly been considered as the turning-point in
Napoleon's career. Up to that moment Metternich's intervention had
amounted to nothing short of selfish double-dealing. Of this Napoleon
had written evidence. No wonder the shifty minister described his
interview as "a most curious mixture of most heterogeneous subjects,
of intermitting friendliness with the most passionate outbreaks," and
strove in his account to deepen the shadows of his picture by discreet
silence as to certain points--a trick he may have learned from
Whitworth. The unfriendly narrator declares that Napoleon, when told
that his soldiers were only boys, flung his hat into a corner, and
hissed, "You do not know what passes in a soldier's mind; I grew up in
the field, and a man like me troubles himself little about a million
men." The Austrian statesman further reported the French emperor to
have characterized his second marriage as a piece of stupidity, and to
have charged his princely interlocutor with venality!

Probably all this is true: the professional soldier's point of view is
terrible to the laity. Kossuth declared to a trustworthy witness that he
had seen the letters of Maria Louisa which betrayed her husband to her
father; and no one has ever denied that Napoleon was a fair judge of
character, and called a spade a spade when he was angry. And angry he
was. Here was the man who had plumed himself on the Bonaparte-Hapsburg
alliance, who had hitherto professed the most ardent personal esteem for
Napoleon himself, and who had so far found Austria's