"I am aware, sire, that I have not, as your Majesty has, the art of employing all kinds of men. I need honest men, in whom I can repose some confidence. Sire, I am in that mood of mind, which your Majesty recognizes in me, in which I love to say whatever I think right. Your Majesty ought to make peace at whatever price. Your Majesty is victorious, triumphant everywhere. You ought to recoil before the blood of your people. It is for the prince to hold back the hero. No extent of country, be it more or less, should restrain you. All the concessions you may make will be glorious, because they will be useful to your peoples, whose purest blood now flows; and victorious and invincible as you are, by the admission of all, no condition can be supposed to be prescribed to you by an enemy whom you have vanquished. "Sire, it is the love which I bear for a brother who has become a father to me, and the love which I owe to France and to the people whom you have given me, which dictates these words of truth. As for me, sire, I shall be happy to do whatever may be in my power to secure that end." This strain of remark must have been not a little annoying to the Emperor. While Joseph did not deny that the Emperor was waging war solely in self-defense, he assumed that he was now so powerful that he could make peace at any time upon his own terms. But dynastic Europe was allying itself, coalition after coalition, in an interminable series, with the avowed object of driving Napoleon from the throne, reinstating the Bourbons, re-establishing the old feudal despotisms, and of then overthrowing the regenerated kingdoms of Italy and of Naples, and all the other popular governments established under the protection of Napoleon. Against these foes the Emperor was contending, not for France alone, but for the rights of humanity throughout Europe and the world. As Napoleon left Paris for the campaigns of Jena and Auerstadt, he said to the Senate, "In so just a war, which we have not provoked by any act, by any pretense, the true cause to which it would be impossible to assign, and where we only take up arms to defend ourselves, we depend entirely upon the support of the laws and of the people." No man could deny the truth of this statement. Napoleon was driven to all the rigors of a winter's campaign in the wilds of Poland. To have received, by the side of his bleak bivouac, whilst thus struggling to defend the rights of humanity throughout Europe, a letter from his amiable brother, written in such a strain of implied reproach, must have been extremely annoying. One would look for an outburst of indignation in response. We turn to the Emperor's reply. It was as follows.