Although Talleyrand on the 18th of February, 1803, in a conference, told Lord Whitworth that Sebastiani’s mission was “purely commercial,” his lordship on the same day received a message from the First Consul, appointing a personal interview to be held at the Tuileries three days afterwards, which revealed a very different state of things. This celebrated interview, which lasted two hours, had been previously carefully rehearsed by Bonaparte, with the idea of either deceiving or intimidating England. “Every wind which blows from England,” exclaimed the petulant ruler of France, as he stood at one end of his table with Lord Whitworth at the other, “is charged with hatred and outrage;” and in this strain he harangued the ambassador throughout, inveighing with bitterness against England, though drawing the veil carefully to conceal his own acts of territorial ambition; and, in the midst of his tirades, throwing out broad hints that if England and France were but united they might share the whole world between them.[255] “As for Malta,” he exclaimed, after he had worked himself into a frenzy, “my mind is made up; I would rather see the English in possession of the heights of Montmartre[256] than that they should continue to hold Malta.” Lord Whitworth stared in calm, imperturbable silence at this outbreak of well-feigned passion; but, on that same evening, made his government acquainted with the extraordinary conversation to which he had listened, the most startling matter of which was the First Consul’s declaration “that Egypt must _sooner or later_ belong to France;” and that in the dismemberment of the Turkish Empire France would take care to have her share. A few days later, conscious of the folly of his previous speech, he caused it to be notified to Lord Whitworth that “a project was in contemplation, by which the integrity of the Turkish Empire would be effectually secured,” Napoleon having evidently perceived that he had overshot his mark, and, therefore, that he must endeavour to obliterate the impression he had made on the mind of the English ambassador. [Sidenote: The English ministers try to gain time.]