whose every word was historical, yielding, as
if for your sake alone, to the irresistible impulse of the most frank
and confiding disclosure; and that voice, so caressing while it
addressed you, was it not the same, whose lowest whisper rang throughout
all Europe, announced wars, decided battles, settled the fate of
empires, raised or destroyed reputations? What vanity could resist a
charm of so great potency? Any defensive position was forced on all
points; his eloquence was so much more persuasive, as he himself
appeared to be persuaded.

On this occasion, there was no variety of tints with which his brilliant
and fertile imagination did not adorn his project, in order to convince
and allure. The same text supplied him with a thousand different
commentaries, with which the character and position of each of his
interlocutors inspired him; he enlisted each in his undertaking, by
presenting it to him under the form and colour, and point of view, most
likely to gratify him.

We have just seen in what way he silenced the one who felt alarmed at
the expenses of the conquest of Russia, which he wished him to approve,
by holding out the perspective, that another would be made to defray
them.

He told the military man, who was astonished by the hazard of the
expedition, but likely to be easily seduced by the grandeur of ambitious
ideas, that peace was to be conquered at Constantinople; that is to say,
at the extremity of Europe; the individual was thus free to anticipate,
that it was not merely to the staff of a marshal, but to a royal
sceptre, that he might elevate his pretensions.

To a minister[14] of high rank under the ancient _regime_, whom the idea
of shedding so much blood, to gratify ambition, filled with dismay, he
declared "that it was a war of policy exclusively; that it was the
English alone whom he meant to attack through Russia; that the campaign
would be short; that afterwards France would be at rest; that it was the
fifth act of the drama--the _denouement_."

[Footnote 14: Count Mole.]

To others, he pleaded the ambition of Russia, and the force of
circumstances, which dragged him into the war in spite of himself. With
superficial and inexperienced individuals, to whom he neither wished to
explain nor dissemble, he cut matters short, by saying, "You understand
nothing of all this; you are ignorant of its antecedents and its
consequents."

But to the princes of his own family he had long revealed the