ed,
and the Government had ordered, a blockade of all Genoese ports
including Spezia; Genoa, now the Ligurian Republic, being considered
as much France as Toulon. Nothing, he said, could distress France
more. This blockade had been but feebly enforced, owing to the lack
of small cruisers; but he hoped to attain the same end by the frigates
off the Hyeres. "I really am of opinion," he told their commander,
"that it will force La Touche out." In the latter, however, he had to
do with an opponent of skill as well as of resolution. Firmly imbued
with the French tradition, and with Bonaparte's instructions, which
subordinated his local action entirely to the great scheme in which
the Toulon fleet had its appointed part, Latouche Treville was neither
to be provoked nor betrayed into an action, by which, however tempting
the promise, his fleet might be made unfit for their intended service.
Nelson did him no more than justice, when he said, "I am confident,
when he is ordered for any service, that he will risk falling in with
us, and the event of a battle, to try and accomplish his orders;" but,
short of the appointed time, nothing else could entice him. In vain
did the British admiral bait his trap by exposing frigates, without
visible support, to draw him to leeward, while the hostile fleet
hovered out of sight to windward. The shrewd Frenchman doubtless felt
the temptation, but he distrusted the gifts too plausibly tendered.

Besides the interest of the public service, Nelson had the strongest
personal motives for bringing matters to an issue. The prolonged
suspense and the anxiety were exhausting him, the steady tension even
of the normal conditions fretted him beyond endurance; but when a
crisis became accentuated by an appearance that the enemy had eluded
him, his feelings of distress, acting upon an enfeebled organization,
and a nervous temperament so sensitive that he started at the mere
dropping of a rope beside him, drove him almost to distraction. On
such an occasion he wrote: "I am absolutely beginning this letter in a
fever of the mind. It is thick as butter-milk, and blowing a Levanter;
and the Narcissus has just spoke me to say, 'she boarded a vessel,
and they understood that the men had seen, a few days before, twelve
sail of ships of war off Minorca. It was in the dusk, and he did not
know which way they were steering.' This is the whole story, and a
lame one. You will imagine my feelings, although I cannot br