England authorizes us to hope for!" [Illustration: ARREST OF THE DUKE D'ENGHIEN.] The amount of business now resting upon the mind of Napoleon, seems incredible. He was personally attending to all the complicated diplomacy of Europe. Spain was professing friendship and alliance, and yet treacherously engaged in acts of hostility. Charles III., perhaps the most contemptible monarch who ever wore a crown, was then upon the throne of Spain. His wife was a shameless libertine. Her paramour, Godoy, called the Prince of Peace, a weak-minded, conceited, worn-out debauchee, governed the degraded empire. Napoleon remonstrated against the perfidy of Spain, and the wrongs France was receiving at her hands. The miserable Godoy returned an answer, mean-spirited, hypocritical, and sycophantic. Napoleon sternly shook his head, and ominously exclaimed, "All this will yet end in a clap of thunder." In the midst of these scenes, Napoleon was continually displaying those generous and magnanimous traits of character which were the enthusiastic love of all who knew him. On one occasion, a young English sailor had escaped from imprisonment in the interior of France, and had succeeded in reaching the coast near Boulogne. Secretly he had constructed a little skiff of the branches and the bark of trees, as fragile as the ark of bullrushes. Upon this frail float, which would scarcely buoy up his body, he was about to venture out upon the stormy channel, with the chance of being picked up by some English cruiser. Napoleon, informed of the desperate project of the young man who was arrested in the attempt, was struck with admiration in view of the fearless enterprise, and ordered the prisoner to be brought before him. "Did you really intend," inquired Napoleon, "to brave the terrors of the ocean in so frail a skiff?" "If you will but grant me permission," said the young man, "I will embark immediately." "You must, doubtless, then, have some mistress to revisit, since you are so desirous to return to your country?" "I wish," replied the noble sailor, "to see my mother. She is aged, poor, and infirm." The heart of Napoleon was touched. "You shall see her," he energetically replied; "and present to her from me this purse of gold. She must be no common mother, who can have trained up so affectionate and dutiful a son."