The new minister arrived almost immediately. Unlike Turreau, Serurier was a diplomate by profession. He had last served as French minister at the Hague, where, by no fault of his own, he drove King Louis of Holland from his throne. February 16 he was presented to the President, and the next day had a long interview with Robert Smith, who learned that he brought no instructions or information of any kind on the one subject that engrossed diplomatic attention. The scene with Francis James Jackson was repeated with the French minister. Again and again Smith pressed his inquiries, which Serurier politely declined to answer except by resenting any suggestion that the Emperor would fail to keep his word.[275] After this interview, on the same day, the President apparently held a Cabinet meeting, and probably also consulted certain party leaders in Congress; but no record of such conferences has been preserved, nor is anything known of the arguments that ended in the most hazardous decision yet risked. If disagreement took place,--if Gallatin, Eppes, Robert Smith, or Crawford remonstrated against the course pursued, not a whisper of their arguments was heard beyond the Cabinet. Serurier himself is the only authority for inferring that some conference was probably held; but he knew so little, that in giving to his Government an account of his first day in Washington he closed the despatch by reporting in a few lines the decision, of which he could have hardly suspected the importance. His interview with Robert Smith took place on the morning of February 17; the afternoon was probably passed by the President and Cabinet in conference; in the evening Mrs. Madison held a reception, where Serurier was received with general cordiality:-- “In coming away, Mr. Smith--probably intending to say something agreeable, and something that I might regard as the effect of our first conversations--assured me that he was authorized to give me the pledge that if (_pour peu que_) England should show the least new resistance to the withdrawal of her orders, the Government had decided to increase the stringency of the non-intercourse, and to give that measure all the effect it ought to have.”