ies were
now arrived, that ultimatum necessarily led to war. Napoleon was too
proud, both of himself and of France, he was too much overruled by his
position, to yield to a menacing negotiator, to leave Prussia at liberty
to throw herself into the open arms of Russia, and thus to abandon
Poland. He was too far advanced; he would be obliged to retrograde, in
order to find a resting point; and in his situation, Napoleon considered
every retrograde step as the incipient point of a complete downfall.

CHAP. V.

His wishes for delay being thus frustrated, he surveyed the enormous
volume of his military strength; the recollections of Tilsit and Erfurt
were revived; he received with complacency delusive information
respecting the character of his rival. At one time, he hoped that
Alexander would give way at the approach of so menacing an invasion; at
another, he gave the reins to his conquering imagination; he indulgently
allowed it to deploy its masses from Cadiz to Cazan, and to cover the
whole of Europe. In the next moment his fancy rioted in the pleasure of
being at Moscow. That city was eight hundred leagues from him, and
already he was collecting information with respect to it, as if he was
on the eve of occupying it. A French physician having recently arrived
from that capital, he sent for, and interrogated him as to the diseases
there prevalent; he even went back to the plague which had formerly
desolated it; he was anxious to learn its origin, progress, and
termination. The answers of this physician were so satisfactory, that
he immediately attached him to his service.

Fully impressed, however, with a sense of the peril in which he was
about to embark, he sought to surround himself with all his friends.
Even Talleyrand was recalled; he was to have been sent to Warsaw, but
the jealousy of a rival and an intrigue again involved him in disgrace;
Napoleon, deluded by a calumny, adroitly circulated, believed that he
had been betrayed by him. His anger was extreme; its expression
terrible. Savary made vain efforts to undeceive him, which were
prolonged up to the epoch of our entry into Wilna; there that minister
again sent a letter of Talleyrand to the emperor; it depicted the
influence of Turkey and Sweden on the Russian war, and made an offer of
employing his most zealous efforts in negotiating with those two powers.

But Napoleon only replied to it by an exclamation of contempt: "Does
that man believe himsel