. He was always so
happy to see Monsieur when he (Talleyrand) was not busy. He would give
Monsieur a certificate of importunity. He had quite forgotten what
Monsieur was talking about on former occasions. Oh, yes, a treaty.
Well, suppose there was such a treaty, what then?

What then? Mr. Livingston, the agreeable but importunate, went home and
wrote a memorial, and was presently assured that the inaccessible Man who
was called First Consul had read it with interest--great interest. Mr.
Livingston did not cease to indulge in his enjoyable visits to
Talleyrand--not he. But in the intervals he sat down to think.

What did the inaccessible Man himself have in his mind?

The Man had been considering the Anglo-Saxon race, and in particular that
portion of it which inhabited the Western Hemisphere. He perceived that
they were a quarrelsome people, which possessed the lust for land and
conquest like the rest of their blood. He saw with astonishment
something that had happened, something that they had done. Unperceived
by the world, in five and twenty years they had swept across a thousand
miles of mountain and forest wilderness in ever increasing thousands, had
beaten the fiercest of savage tribes before them, stolidly unmindful of
their dead. They had come at length to the great yellow River, and
finding it closed had cried aloud in their anger. What was beyond it to
stop them? Spain, with a handful of subjects inherited from the France
of Louis the Fifteenth.

Could Spain stop them? No. But he, the Man, would stop them. He would
raise up in Louisiana as a monument to himself a daughter of France to
curb their ambition. America should not be all Anglo-Saxon.

Already the Americans had compelled Spain to open the River. How long
before they would overrun Louisiana itself, until a Frenchman or a
Spaniard could scarce be found in the land?

Sadly, in accordance with the treaty which Monsieur Talleyrand had known
nothing about, his Catholic Majesty instructed his Intendant at New
Orleans to make ready to deliver Louisiana to the French Commission.
That was in July, 1802. This was not exactly an order to close the River
again--in fact, his Majesty said nothing about closing the River. Mark
the reasoning of the Spanish mind. The Intendant closed the River as his
plain duty. And Kentucky and Tennessee, wayward, belligerent infants who
had outgrown their swaddling clothes, were heard from again. The Nation
had learned to listen