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"I flatter myself," replied Lucien, "that the Chambers will not give their consent."

"You flatter yourself!" repeated Napoleon in a tone of surprise; then murmuring in a lower voice, "that is precious, in truth!"

"And I too flatter myself, as I have already told the First Consul," cried Joseph.

"And what did I answer?" said Napoleon warmly, glaring from his bath at the two men.

"That you would do without the Chambers."

"Precisely! That is what I have taken the great liberty to tell Mr. Joseph, and what I now repeat to the Citizen Lucien,--begging him at the same time to give me his opinion about it, without taking into consideration his paternal tenderness for his diplomatic conquest." Then, not satisfied with irony, he continued in a tone of exasperating contempt: "And now, gentlemen, think of it what you will; but both of you go into mourning about this affair,--you, Lucien, for the sale itself; you, Joseph, because I shall do without the consent of any one whomsoever. Do you understand?"

At this Joseph came close to the bath, and rejoined in a vehement tone: "And you will do well, my dear brother, not to expose your project to parliamentary discussion; for I declare to you that if necessary I will put myself first at the head of the opposition which will not fail to be made against you."

The First Consul burst into a peal of forced laughter, while Joseph, crimson with anger and almost stammering his words, went on: "Laugh, laugh, laugh, then! I will act up to my promise; and though I am not fond of mounting the tribune, this time you will see me there!"

Napoleon, half rising from the bath, rejoined in a serious tone: "You will have no need to lead the opposition, for I repeat that there will be no debate, for the reason that the project which has not the fortune to meet your approval, conceived by me, negotiated by me, shall be ratified and executed by me alone, do you comprehend?--by me, who laugh at your opposition!"

Hereupon Joseph wholly lost his self-control, and with flashing eyes shouted: "Good! I tell you, General, that you, I, and all of us, if you do what you threaten, may prepare ourselves soon to go and join the poor innocent devils whom you so legally, humanely, and especially with such justice, have transported to Sinnamary."

At this terrible rejoinder Napoleon half started up, crying out: "You are insolent! I ought--" then threw himself violently back in the bath with a force which sent a mass of perfumed water into Joseph's flushed face, drenching him and Lucien, who had the wit to quote, in a theatrical tone, the words which Virgil put into the mouth of Neptune reproving the waves,--

Between the water and the wit the three Bonapartes recovered their tempers, while the valet who was present, overcome by fear, fainted and fell on the floor. Joseph went home to change his clothes, while Lucien remained to pass through another scene almost equally amusing. A long conversation followed after the First Consul's toilet was finished. Napoleon spoke of St. Domingo. "Do you want me to tell you the truth?" said he. "I am to-day more sorry than I like to confess for the expedition to St. Domingo. Our national glory will never come from our marine." He justified what he called, in jest at Lucien, his "Louisianicide," by the same reasons he gave to Marbois and Talleyrand, but especially by the necessity of providing funds for the war not yet declared. Lucien combated his arguments as Joseph had done, until at last he reached the same point. "If, like Joseph, I thought that this alienation of Louisiana without the assent of the Chambers might be fatal to me,--to me alone,--I would consent to run all risks in order to prove the devotion you doubt; but it is really too unconstitutional and--"

"Ah, indeed!" burst out Napoleon with another prolonged, forced laugh of derisive anger. "You lay it on handsomely! Unconstitutional is droll from you. Come now, let me alone! How have I hurt your Constitution? Answer!" Lucien replied that the intent to alienate any portion whatever of territory belonging to the Republic without the consent of the Chambers was an unconstitutional project. "In a word, the Constitution--"

"Go about your business!" broke in the guardian of the Constitution and of the national territory. Then he quickly and vehemently went on: "Constitution! unconstitutional! republic! national sovereignty!--big words! great phrases! Do you think yourself still in the club of St. Maximin? We are no longer there, mind that! Ah, it becomes you well, Sir Knight of the Constitution, to talk so to me! You had not the same respect for the Chambers on the 18th Brumaire!"

"I think, Citizen Consul, that having given your oath to the Constitution of the 18th Brumaire into my own hands as President of the Council of Five Hundred, seeing you despise it thus, if I were not your brother I would be your enemy."

"My enemy! ah, I would advise you! My enemy! That is a trifle strong!" cried Napoleon, advancing as though to strike his younger brother. "You my enemy! I would break you, look, like this box!" And so saying he flung his snuff-box violently on the floor.

In these angry scenes both parties knew that Napoleon's bravado was not altogether honest. For once, Lucien was in earnest; and had his brother left a few other men in France as determined as he and his friend Bernadotte, the First Consul would have defied public opinion less boldly. Joseph, too, although less obstinate than his brothers, was not easily managed. According to Lucien there were further scenes between them, at one of which Joseph burst into such violence that the First Consul took refuge in Josephine's room. These stories contained nothing incredible. The sale of Louisiana was the turning-point in Napoleon's career; no true Frenchman forgave it. A second betrayal of France, it announced to his fellow conspirators that henceforward he alone was to profit by the treason of the 18th Brumaire.

Livingston and Monroe knew nothing of all this; they even depended upon Joseph to help their negotiation. Monroe fell ill and could not act. Over the negotiation of the treaty has always hung a cloud of mystery such as belonged to no other measure of equal importance in American history. No official report showed that the commissioners ever met in formal conference; no protocol of their proceedings, no account of their discussions, no date when their agreement was made, was left on record. Both the treaty itself and the avowals of Livingston gave evidence that at the end all parties acted in haste. If it were not for a private memorandum by Monroe,--not sent to the Government, but preserved among his private papers,--the course of negotiation could not be followed.

The 30th of April was taken by Marbois for consultation with the First Consul. May 1 Monroe was presented at the Tuileries, and dined there with Livingston; but Bonaparte said nothing of their business, except that it should be settled. The same evening the two envoys had a final discussion with Marbois. "May 2, we actually signed the treaty and convention for the sixty million francs to France, in the French language; but our copies in English not being made out, we could not sign in our language. They were however prepared, and signed in two or three days afterward. The convention respecting American claims took more time, and was not signed till about the 8th or 9th." All these documents were antedated to the 30th April.

The first object of remark in this treaty was the absence of any attempt to define the property thus bought and sold. "Louisiana with the same extent that is now in the hands of Spain, and that it had when France possessed it, and such as it should be after the treaties subsequently entered into between Spain and other States,"--these words, taken from Berthier's original treaty of retrocession, were convenient for France and Spain, whose governments might be supposed to know their own boundaries; but all that the United States government knew upon the subject was that Louisiana, as France possessed it, had included a part of Florida and the whole Ohio Valley as far as the Alleghany Mountains and Lake Erie. The American commissioners at first insisted upon defining the boundaries, and Marbois went to the First Consul with their request. He refused. "If an obscurity did not already exist, it would perhaps be good policy to put one there." He intentionally concealed the boundary he had himself defined, a knowledge of which would have prevented a long and mortifying dispute. Livingston went to Talleyrand for the orders given by Spain to the Marquis of Somoruelo, by France to Victor and Laussat. "What are the eastern bounds of Louisiana?" asked Livingston. "I do not know," replied Talleyrand; "you must take it as we received it." "But what did you mean to take?" urged Livingston. "I do not know," repeated Talleyrand. "Then you mean that we shall construe it our own way?" "I can give you no direction. You have made a noble bargain for yourselves, and I suppose you will make the most of it," was the final reply of Talleyrand. Had Livingston known that Victor's instructions, which began by fixing the boundaries in question, were still in Talleyrand's desk, the answer would have been the same.

One point alone was fixed,--the Floridas were not included in the sale; this was conceded on both sides. In his first conversation with Marbois, Livingston made a condition that France should aid him in procuring these territories from Spain. "I asked him, in case of purchase, whether they would stipulate that France would never possess the Floridas, and that she would aid us to procure them, and relinquish all right that she might have to them. He told me that she would go thus far." Several days later, Marbois repeated this assurance to Monroe, saying that the First Consul authorized him, besides offering Louisiana, "to engage his support of our claim to the Floridas with Spain." Yet when the American commissioners tried to insert this pledge into the treaty, they failed. Bonaparte would give nothing but a verbal promise to use his good offices with Spain.

Doubtless Livingston was right in securing his main object at any cost; but could he have given more time to his claims convention, he would perhaps have saved his own reputation and that of his successor from much stain, although he might have gained no more than he did for his Government. In the two conventions of 1800 and 1803 the United States obtained two objects of the utmost value,--by the first, a release from treaty obligations which, if carried out, required war with England; by the second, the whole west bank of the Mississippi River and the island of New Orleans, with all the incidental advantages attached. In return for these gains the United States government promised not to press the claims of its citizens against the French government beyond the amount of three million seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which was one fourth part of the price paid for Louisiana. The legitimate claims of American citizens against France amounted to many million dollars; in the result, certain favored claimants received three million seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars less their expenses, which reduced the sum about one half.

The impression of diplomatic oversight was deepened by the scandals which grew out of the distribution of the three million seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars which the favored claimants were to receive. Livingston's diplomatic career was poisoned by quarrels over this money. That the French government acted with little concealment of venality was no matter of surprise; but that Livingston should be officially charged by his own associates with favoritism and corruption,--"imbecility of mind and a childish vanity, mixed with a considerable portion of duplicity,"--injured the credit of his Government; and the matter was not bettered when he threw back similar charges on the Board of Commissioners, or when at last General Armstrong, coming to succeed him, was discredited by similar suspicions. Considering how small was the amount of money distributed, the scandal and corruption surpassed any other experience of the national government.

Livingston's troubles did not end there. He could afford to suffer some deduction from his triumph; for he had achieved the greatest diplomatic success recorded in American history. Neither Franklin, Jay, Gallatin, nor any other American diplomatist was so fortunate as Livingston for the immensity of his results compared with the paucity of his means. Other treaties of immense consequence have been signed by American representatives,--the treaty of alliance with France; the treaty of peace with England which recognized independence; the treaty of Ghent; the treaty which ceded Florida; the Ashburton treaty; the treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo,--but in none of these did the United States government get so much for so little. The annexation of Louisiana was an event so portentous as to defy measurement; it gave a new face to politics, and ranked in historical importance next to the Declaration of Independence and the adoption of the Constitution,--events of which it was the logical outcome; but as a matter of diplomacy it was unparalleled, because it cost almost nothing.

The scandalous failure of the claims convention was a trifling drawback to the enjoyment of this unique success; but the success was further embittered by the conviction that America would give the honor to Monroe. Virginia was all-powerful. Livingston was unpopular, distrusted, not liked even by Madison; while Monroe, for political reasons, had been made a prominent figure. Public attention had been artificially drawn upon his mission; and in consequence, Monroe's name grew great, so as almost to overshadow that of Madison, while Livingston heard few voices proclaiming his services to the country. In a few weeks Livingston began to see his laurels wither, and was forced to claim the credit that he thought his due. Monroe treated him less generously than he might have done, considering that Monroe gained the political profit of the success. Acknowledging that his own share was next to nothing in the negotiation, he still encouraged the idea that Livingston's influence had been equally null. This view was doubtless correct, but if universally applied in history, would deprive many great men of their laurels. Monroe's criticism helped only to diminish the political chances of a possible rival who had no Virginia behind him to press his preferment and cover his mistakes.

Yet money was not the inducement which caused Bonaparte to sell Louisiana to the United States. The Prince of Peace would at any time have given more money, and would perhaps have been willing, as he certainly was able, to pay it from his private means rather than allow the United States to own Louisiana. In other respects, the sale needed explanation, since it contradicted the First Consul's political theories and prejudices. He had but two rooted hatreds. The deeper and fiercer of these was directed against the republic,--the organized democracy, and what he called ideology, which Americans knew in practice as Jeffersonian theories; the second and steadier was his hatred of England as the chief barrier to his military omnipotence. The cession of Louisiana to the United States contradicted both these passions, making the ideologists supreme in the New World, and necessarily tending in the end to strengthen England in the Old. Bonaparte had been taught by Talleyrand that America and England, whatever might be their mutual jealousies, hatreds, or wars, were socially and economically one and indivisible. Barely ten years after the Revolutionary War had closed, and at a time when the wounds it made were still raw, Talleyrand remarked: "In every part of America through which I have travelled, I have not found a single Englishman who did not feel himself to be an American; not a single Frenchman who did not find himself a stranger." Bonaparte knew that England held the monopoly of American trade, and that America held the monopoly of democratic principles; yet he did an act which was certain to extend British trade and fortify democratic principles.

This contradiction was due to no change in Bonaparte's opinions; these remained what they were. At the moment when talking to Marbois about "those republicans whose friendship I seek," he was calculating on the chance that his gift would one day prove their ruin. "Perhaps it will also be objected to me," he said, "that the Americans may in two or three centuries be found too powerful for Europe; but my foresight does not embrace such remote fears. Besides, we may hereafter expect rivalries among the members of the Union. The confederations that are called perpetual last only till one of the contracting parties finds it to its interest to break them.... It is to prevent the danger to which the colossal power of England exposes us that I would provide a remedy." The colossal power of England depended on her navy, her colonies, and her manufactures. Bonaparte proposed to overthrow it by shattering beyond repair the colonial system of France and Spain; and even this step was reasonable compared with what followed. He expected to check the power of England by giving Louisiana to the United States,--a measure which opened a new world to English commerce and manufactures, and riveted England's grasp on the whole American continent, inviting her to do what she afterward did,--join hands with the United States in revolutionizing Mexico and South America in her own interests. As though to render these results certain, after extending this invitation to English commerce and American democracy, Bonaparte next invited a war with England, which was certain to drive from the ocean every ship belonging to France or Spain,--a war which left even the United States at England's mercy.

This was, in effect, the explanation which Talleyrand officially wrote to his colleague Decr?s, communicating a copy of the treaty, and requesting him to take the necessary measures for executing it.

"The wish to spare the North American continent the war with which it was threatened, to dispose of different points in dispute between France and the United States of America, and to remove all the new causes of misunderstanding which competition and neighborhood might have produced between them; the position of the French colonies; their want of men, cultivation, and assistance; in fine, the empire of circumstances, foresight of the future, and the intention to compensate by an advantageous arrangement for the inevitable loss of a country which war was going to put at the mercy of another nation,--all these motives have determined the Government to pass to the United States the rights it had acquired from Spain over the sovereignty and property of Louisiana."

In the midst of such anxieties, Godoy heard a public rumor that Bonaparte had sold Louisiana to the United States; and he felt it as the death-knell of the Spanish empire. Between the energy of the American democracy and the violence of Napoleon whom no oath bound, Spain could hope for no escape. From New Orleans to Vera Cruz was but a step; from Bayonne to Cadiz a winter campaign of some five or six hundred miles. Yet Godoy would probably have risked everything, and would have thrown Spain into England's hands, had he been able to control the King and Queen, over whom Bonaparte exercised the influence of a master. On learning the sale of Louisiana, the Spanish government used language almost equivalent to a rupture with France. The Spanish minister at Paris was ordered to remonstrate in the strongest terms against the step which the First Consul had taken behind the back of the King his ally.

Then, after reciting the words of Gouvion St.-Cyr's pledge, the note continued:--

"It is impossible to conceive more frankness or loyalty than the King has put into his conduct toward France throughout this affair. His Majesty had therefore the right to expect as much on the part of his ally, but unhappily finds himself deceived in his hopes by the sale of the said colony. Yet trusting always in the straightforwardness and justice of the First Consul, he has ordered me to make this representation, and to protest against the alienation, hoping that it will be revoked, as manifestly contrary to the treaties and to the most solemn anterior promises."

Not stopping there, the note also insisted that Tuscany should be evacuated by the French troops, who were not needed, and had become an intolerable burden, so that the country was reduced to the utmost misery. Next, King Charles demanded that Parma and Piacenza should be surrendered to the King of Etruria, to whom they belonged as the heir of the late Duke of Parma. Finally, the note closed with a complaint even more grave in substance than any of the rest:--

"The King my master could have wished also a little more friendly frankness in communicating the negotiations with England, and especially in regard to the dispositions of the Northern courts, guarantors of the treaty of Amiens; but as this affair belongs to negotiations of another kind, the undersigned abstains for the moment from entering into them, reserving the right to do so on a better occasion."

"The whole matter reduces itself to a blunder of the Intendant," said Cevallos; "it has been finally explained to Mr. Jefferson, and friendship is restored. On both sides there has been irritation, but not a shadow of aggression; and from the moment of coming to an understanding, both parties see that they are at bottom of one mind, and mutually very well disposed toward each other. Moreover, it is quite gratuitous to assume that Louisiana is so easy to take in the event of a war, either by the Americans or by the English. The first have only militia,--very considerable, it is true, but few troops of the line; while Louisiana, at least for the moment, has ten thousand militia-men, and a body of three thousand five hundred regular troops. As for the English, they cannot seriously have views on a province which is impregnable to them; and all things considered, it would be no great calamity if they should take it. The United States, having a much firmer hold on the American continent, should they take a new enlargement, would end by becoming formidable, and would one day disturb the Spanish possessions. As for the debts due to Americans, Spain has still more claim to an arrangement of that kind; and in any case the King, as Bonaparte must know, would have gladly discharged all the debts contracted by France, and perhaps even a large instalment of the American claim, in order to recover an old domain of the crown. Finally, the intention which led the King to give his consent to the exchange of Louisiana was completely deceived. This intention had been to interpose a strong dyke between the Spanish colonies and the American possessions; now, on the contrary, the doors of Mexico are to stay open to them."

To these allegations, which Beurnonville called "insincere, weak, and ill-timed," Cevallos added a piece of evidence which, strangely enough, was altogether new to the French minister, and reduced him to confusion: it was Gouvion St.-Cyr's letter, pledging the First Consul never to alienate Louisiana.

When Beurnonville's despatch narrating these interviews reached Paris, it stung Bonaparte to the quick, and called from him one of the angry avowals with which he sometimes revealed a part of the motives that influenced his strange mind. Talleyrand wrote back to Beurnonville, June 22, a letter which bore the mark of the First Consul's hand.

"In one of my last letters," he began, "I made known to you the motives which determined the Government to give up Louisiana to the United States. You will not conceal from the Court of Madrid that one of the causes which had most influence on this determination was discontent at learning that Spain, after having promised to sustain the measures taken by the Intendant of New Orleans, had nevertheless formally revoked them. These measures would have tended to free the capital of Louisiana from subjection to a right of deposit which was becoming a source of bickerings between the Louisianians and Americans. We should have afterward assigned to the United States, in conformity to their treaty with Spain, another place of deposit, less troublesome to the colony and less injurious to its commerce; but Spain put to flight all these hopes by confirming the privileges of the Americans at New Orleans,--thus granting them definitively local advantages which had been at first only temporary. The French government, which had reason to count on the contrary assurance given in this regard by that of Spain, had a right to feel surprise at this determination; and seeing no way of reconciling it with the commercial advantages of the colony and with a long peace between the colony and its neighbors, took the only course which actual circumstances and wise prevision could suggest."

These assertions contained no more truth than those which Cevallos had answered. Spain had not promised to sustain the Intendant, nor had she revoked the Intendant's measures after, but before, the imagined promise; she had not confirmed the American privileges at New Orleans, but had expressly reserved them for future treatment. On the other hand, the restoration of the deposit was not only reconcilable with peace between Louisiana and the United States, but the whole world knew that the risk of war rose from the threat of disturbing the right of deposit. The idea that the colony had become less valuable on this account was new. France had begged for the colony with its American privileges, and meaning to risk the chances of American hostility; but if these privileges were the cause of selling the colony to the Americans, and if, as Talleyrand implied, France could and would have held Louisiana if the right of deposit at New Orleans had been abolished and the Americans restricted to some other spot on the river-bank, fear of England was not, as had been previously alleged, the cause of the sale. Finally, if the act of Spain made the colony worthless, why was Spain deprived of the chance to buy it back?

The real reasons which induced Bonaparte to alienate the territory from France remained hidden in the mysterious processes of his mind. Perhaps he could not himself have given the true explanation of his act. Anger with Spain and Godoy had a share in it, as he avowed through Talleyrand's letter of June 22; disgust for the sacrifices he had made, and impatience to begin his new campaigns on the Rhine,--possibly a wish to show Talleyrand that his policy could never be revived, and that he had no choice but to follow into Germany,--had still more to do with the act. Yet it is also reasonable to believe that the depths of his nature concealed a wish to hide forever the monument of a defeat. As he would have liked to blot Corsica, Egypt, and St. Domingo from the map, and wipe from human memory the record of his failures, he may have taken pleasure in flinging Louisiana far off, and burying it forever from the sight of France in the bosom of the only government which could absorb and conceal it.

For reasons of his own, which belonged rather to military and European than to American history, Bonaparte preferred to deal with Germany before crossing the Pyrenees; and he knew that meanwhile Spain could not escape. Godoy on his side could neither drag King Charles into a war with France, nor could he provide the means of carrying on such a war with success. Where strong nations like Austria, Russia, and Prussia were forced to crouch before Bonaparte, and even England would have been glad to accept tolerable terms, Spain could not challenge attack. The violent anger that followed the sale of Louisiana and the rupture of the peace of Amiens soon subsided. Bonaparte, aware that he had outraged the rights of Spain, became moderate. Anxious to prevent her from committing any act of desperation, he did not require her to take part in the war, but even allowed her stipulated subsidies to run in arrears; and although he might not perhaps regret his sale of Louisiana to the United States, he felt that he had gone too far in shaking the colonial system. At the moment when Cevallos made his bitterest complaints, Bonaparte was least disposed to resent them by war. Both parties knew that so far as Louisiana was concerned, the act was done and could not be undone; that France was bound to carry out her pledge, or the United States would take possession of Louisiana without her aid. Bonaparte was willing to go far in the way of conciliation, if Spain would consent to withdraw her protest.

Of this the American negotiators knew little. Through such complications, of which Bonaparte alone understood the secret, the Americans moved more or less blindly, not knowing enemies from friends. The only public man who seemed ever to understand Napoleon's methods was Pozzo di Borgo, whose ways of thought belonged to the island society in which both had grown to manhood; and Monroe was not skilled in the diplomacy of Pozzo, or even of Godoy. Throughout life, Monroe was greatly under the influence of other men. He came to Paris almost a stranger to its new society, for his only relations of friendship had been with the republicans, most of whom Bonaparte had sent to Cayenne. He found Livingston master of the situation, and wisely interfered in no way with what Livingston did. The treaty was no sooner signed than he showed his readiness to follow Livingston further, without regard to embarrassments which might result.

When Livingston set his name to the treaty of cession, May 2, 1803, he was aware of the immense importance of the act. He rose and shook hands with Monroe and Marbois. "We have lived long," said he; "but this is the noblest work of our lives." This was said by the man who in the Continental Congress had been a member of the committee appointed to draft the Declaration of Independence; and it was said to Monroe, who had been assured only three months before, by President Jefferson of the grandeur of his destinies in words he could hardly have forgotten: "Some men are born for the public. Nature, by fitting them for the service of the human race on a broad scale, has stamped them with the evidences of her destination and their duty." Monroe was born for the public, and knew what destiny lay before him; while in Livingston's mind New York had thenceforward a candidate for the Presidency whose claims were better than Monroe's. In the cup of triumph of which these two men then drank deep, was yet one drop of acid. They had been sent to buy the Floridas and New Orleans. They had bought New Orleans; but instead of Florida, so much wanted by the Southern people, they had paid ten or twelve million dollars for the west bank of the Mississippi. The negotiators were annoyed to think that having been sent to buy the east bank of the Mississippi, they had bought the west bank instead; that the Floridas were not a part of their purchase. Livingston especially felt the disappointment, and looked about him for some way to retrieve it.

"I have used every exertion with the Spanish Ambassador and Lord Whitworth to prevent the transfer of the Floridas, ... and unless they get Florida, I have convinced them that Louisiana is worth little."

"Now, sir, the sum of this business is to recommend to you in the strongest terms, after having obtained the possession that the French commissary will give you, to insist upon this as a part of your right, and to take possession at all events to the River Perdido. I pledge myself that your right is good."

The reasoning on which he rested this change of opinion was in substance the following: France had, in early days, owned nearly all the North American continent, and her province of Louisiana had then included Ohio and the watercourses between the Lakes and the Gulf, as well as West Florida, or a part of it. This possession lasted until the treaty of peace, Nov. 3, 1762, when France ceded to England not only Canada, but also Florida and all other possessions east of the Mississippi, except the Island of New Orleans. Then West Florida by treaty first received its modern boundary at the Iberville. On the same day France further ceded to Spain the Island of New Orleans and all Louisiana west of the Mississippi. Not a foot of the vast French possessions on the continent of North America remained in the hands of the King of France; they were divided between England and Spain.

The ingenuity of Livingston's idea was not to be disputed; and as a ground for a war of conquest it was as good as some of the claims which Bonaparte made the world respect. As a diplomatic weapon, backed as Napoleon would have backed it by a hundred thousand soldiers, it was as effective an instrument as though it had every attribute of morality and good faith; and all it wanted, as against Spain, was the approval of Bonaparte. Livingston hoped that after the proof of friendship which Bonaparte had already given in selling Louisiana to the United States, he might without insuperable difficulty be induced to grant this favor. Both Marbois and Talleyrand, under the First Consul's express orders, led him on. Marbois did not deny that Mobile might lie in Louisiana, and Talleyrand positively denied knowledge that Laussat's instructions contained a definition of boundaries. Bonaparte stood behind both these agents, telling them that if an obscurity did not exist about the boundary they should make one. Talleyrand went so far as to encourage the pretensions which Livingston hinted: "You have made a noble bargain for yourselves," said he, "and I suppose you will make the most of it." This was said at the time when Bonaparte was still intent on punishing Spain.

Livingston found no difficulty in convincing Monroe that they had bought Florida as well as Louisiana.

"We consider ourselves so strongly founded in this conclusion, that we are of opinion the United States should act on it in all the measures relative to Louisiana in the same manner as if West Florida was comprised within the Island of New Orleans, or lay to the west of the River Iberville."

Livingston expected that "a little force," as he expressed himself, might be necessary.

"After the explanations that have been given here, you need apprehend nothing from a decisive measure; your minister here and at Madrid can support your claim, and the time is peculiarly favorable to enable you to do it without the smallest risk at home.... The moment is so favorable for taking possession of that country that I hope it has not been neglected, even though a little force should be necessary to effect it. Your minister must find the means to justify it."

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