This letter might well have alarmed Ferdinand and his counsellors; but there came at the same time letters from the persons who had been sent forward to Bayonne, urging him to show no distrust of Buonaparte, but to hasten forward and meet him, as the sure and only means of averting the fatal effects of his displeasure, and securing his friendship. They had now indeed advanced too far to recede; and their thoughts were rather exercised in seeking to justify to themselves the imprudence which they had already committed, than in devising how to remedy it. They persuaded themselves that Buonaparte was not ambitious of adding territory to the French empire; that his conduct, even toward hostile powers, was marked by generosity and moderation; and that his leading maxims of policy were, not wholly to despoil his enemies, but to aggrandize and reward his allies at their expense, and with what he took from them to form states more or less considerable for his relations, whose interest it would be to observe his system and support his empire. The instances of Holland and Naples might indeed seem not very well to agree with this view of his conduct; but it was obvious, they said, that while Holland remained under a republican form it would unavoidably connive with England, and the Dutch themselves were desirous of the change; and with regard to Naples, Napoleon could not possibly act otherwise than he had done, after the conduct of that court. Such was the miserable reasoning with which Ferdinand’s advisers flattered themselves at the time, ♦ESCOIQUIZ. IDEA SENCILLA, C. 3.♦ and which they have since offered to the world as their justification; instead of fairly confessing, that in consequence of the events at Aranjuez they had placed themselves in a situation in which there was no alternative for men of their pitch of mind but to surrender at discretion to Buonaparte. ♦PROMISES OF SAVARY, AND PREPARATIONS FOR SEIZING FERDINAND.♦