ery little difference.

_Talleyrand._ Some, however. The one was only drunk all the evening
and all the night; the other was only asleep all the day. The
accumulated fogs of Walcheren seemed to concentrate in his brain,
puffing out at intervals just sufficient to affect with typhus and
blindness four thousand soldiers. A cake of powder rusted their
musket-pans, which they were too weak to open and wipe. Turning round
upon their scanty and mouldy straw, they beheld their bayonets piled
together against the green dripping wall of the chamber, which neither
bayonet nor soldier was ever to leave again.

_Louis._ We suffer by the presence of the allied armies in our
capital: but we shall soon be avenged: for the English minister in
another fortnight will return and remain at home.

_Talleyrand._ England was once so infatuated as to give up Malta to
us, although fifty Gibraltars would be of inferior value to her.
Napoleon laughed at her: she was angry: she began to suspect she had
been duped and befooled: and she broke her faith.

_Louis._ For the first time, M. Talleyrand, and with a man who never
had any.

_Talleyrand._ We shall now induce her to evacuate Sicily, in violation
of her promises to the people of that island. Faith, having lost her
virginity, braves public opinion, and never blushes more.

_Louis._ Sicily is the key to India, Egypt is the lock.

_Talleyrand._ What, if I induce the minister to restore to us
Pondicherry?

_Louis._ M. Talleyrand! you have done great things, and without
boasting. Whenever you do boast, let it be that you will perform only
the thing which is possible. The English know well enough what it is
to allow us a near standing-place anywhere. If they permit a Frenchman
to plant one foot in India, it will upset all Asia before the other
touches the ground. It behoves them to prohibit a single one of us
from ever landing on those shores. Improbable as it is that a man
uniting to the same degree as Hyder-Ali did political and military
genius, will appear in the world again for centuries; most of the
princes are politic, some are brave, and perhaps no few are credulous.
While England is confiding in our loyalty, we might expatiate on her
perfidy, and our tears fall copiously on the broken sceptre in the
dust of Delhi. Ignorant and stupid as the king's ministers may be, the
East India Company is well-informed on its interests, and alert in
maintaining them. I wonder that a republic so we