"Metternich, the worldly-wise, smiled at this manifesto as 'nothing more than a philanthropic aspiration clothed in a religious garb.' He suspected that the evil-minded would misinterpret and that the jokers would ridicule it, but none knew better than he the flimsiness of diplomatic agreements, and accordingly he consented to it. Christianity has had many crimes committed in its name; the Holy Alliance made Christianity the cloak under which the kings of Europe conspired to perpetuate the helotage of their subjects. Metternich found it all the easier to direct kings whose common interest it was to uphold the paternal system therein approved. He exerted his influence over each of them separately; if the monarch were obdurate, he wheedled his minister; if the minister were wary, he prejudiced the monarch against him. Now by flattery, and now by specious argument, he won his advantage. … Like a trickster at cards, he marked every card in the pack and could always play the ace. … He told the truth when he knew it would not be believed; he prevaricated when he intended his falsehood should pass for truth. This was diplomacy, these the 'Christian precepts' by which one hundred and fifty millions of Europeans were governed. {1659} In a society where everyone lies, falsehoods of equal cunning nullify each other. Metternich took care that his should excel in verisimilitude and in subtlety. It was an open battle of craft; but his craft was as superior to that of his competitors as a slow, undetectable poison is more often fatal than the hasty stab of a bravo. He fished both with hooks and nets; if one broke, the other held. … He was, we may affirm, sincerely insincere; strongly attached to the Hapsburg dynasty, and patriotic in so far as the aggrandizement of that House corresponded with the interests of the Austrian State. But the central figure in his perspective was always himself, whom he regarded as the savior of a social order whose preservation held back the world from chaos. … He spoke of his mission as an 'apostolate.' … To resist all change,—that was his policy; to keep the surface smooth,—that was his peace. … He likened himself to a spider, spinning a vast web. 'I begin to know the world well,' he said, 'and I believe that the flies are eaten by the spiders only because they die naturally so young that they have no time to gain experience, and do not know what is the nature of a spider's web.' How many flies he caught during his forty years' spinning! but his success, he admitted, was due quite as much to their blindness as to his cunning. … He seemed to delight in royal conferences in order that he might have the excitement of manipulating Alexander and Frederick William; for his own Emperor, Francis, was as pliable as putty in his hands. Such was Metternich, 'the most worldly, the most