strengthened,
and Murat by strenuous efforts was kept within the shadowy lines of
the vanishing Napoleonic system. Beugnot, then head of the French
regency of Berg, was one day called at a moment's notice to act as
amanuensis, and in a flurry twice took his Emperor's chair. "So you
are determined to sit in my seat," was Napoleon's simple remark; "you
have chosen a bad time for it." The mayor of Mainz was St. Andre, a
stanch conventional of the old school; another day he and Beugnot,
with the Prince of Nassau, accompanied the visitor on a river
excursion, and the Emperor, scanning with intense interest the castle
of Biberich, leaned far over the boat. "What a curious attitude,"
whispered the veteran revolutionary to the terrified Beugnot; "the
fate of the world depends on a kick or two."

The fate of the world was not in jeopardy, and the seat of Napoleon as
Emperor of the West was not to be occupied by another; but the affairs
of the Continent were to be readjusted, the beneficent work of the
Revolution was to be transferred to other hands, and the notion of
Western empire was to vanish like other baseless fabrics. The
diplomacy of Lord Aberdeen, Castlereagh's envoy at Vienna, had
succeeded before Napoleon returned to Dresden, and the treaty of
eventual triple alliance, signed at Reichenbach on June
twenty-seventh, was made good on August first by Francis, who agreed,
in return for an enormous subsidy from Great Britain, to join Russia
and Prussia with two hundred thousand men. The rosters of Austria's
army had been surreptitiously obtained by French agents in Prague.
Napoleon was aghast as he read the proof of her gigantic efforts. At
once he redoubled his own, and began to unfold a marvelous diplomatic
shrewdness. With Poland's three despoilers thus united in England's
pay, his isolation would be complete; a few days only remained until
the expiration of the armistice; he had but one arrow left in his
quiver, and he determined to speed it: to bribe Austria into
neutrality by accepting her conditions and restoring the national
equilibrium of Europe.

The proposition was made, and staggered Francis; for two days he
dallied, and then made a counter-proposition with a new clause, which
secured, not the emancipation of states, but dynastic independence for
the sovereigns of the Rhine Confederation. This drew the veil from
Metternich's policy. Afraid of a German nationality in which Prussia
would inevitably secure the he