Meantime, Buonaparte made a last attempt at negotiation, or rather to discover what was the state of the Emperor Alexander's mind, who, while he was himself surrounded by sovereigns, as the sun by planets, remained lonely in his own orbit, collecting around him means of defence, which, immense as they were, seemed scarcely adequate to the awful crisis in which he stood. General Lauriston had been despatched to Wilna, to communicate definitively with Alexander. Count de Narbonne, already noticed as the most adroit courtier of the Tuileries was sent to invite the Czar to meet Napoleon at Dresden, in hopes that, in a personal treaty, the two sovereigns might resume their habits of intimacy, and settle between themselves what they had been unable to arrange through their ambassadors. But Lauriston could obtain no audience of the Emperor, and the report of Narbonne was decidedly warlike. He found the Russians neither depressed nor elated, but arrived at the general conclusion, that war was become inevitable, and therefore determined to submit to its evils, rather than avoid them by a dishonourable peace.[110] FOOTNOTES: [93] Meredith's Memorials of Charles John, King of Sweden and Norway, p. 25. [94] See Appendix to this Volume, No. I. [95] See Meredith's Memorials, p. 38. [96] In the _Moniteur_, a scandalous intrigue was repeatedly alluded to as existing between this princess and the Emperor Alexander, and both to M. Las Cases, and to others; Buonaparte affirmed the same personally; telling, at the same time, as a good jest, that he himself had kept the King of Prussia out of the way, to provide the lovers a stolen meeting [vol. ii., p. 213.] These averments are so inconsistent with the character universally assigned to this high-spirited and unhappy princess, that we have no hesitation to assign them directly to calumny; a weapon which Napoleon never disdained to wield, whether in private or national controversy.--S. [97] Histoire de l'Ambassade dans le Grand Duché de Varsovie en 1812. [98] The fact is now pretty generally admitted to have been as stated in the text. But in the public treaty, it appeared that France negotiated an armistice, called that of Slobodsea, by which it was stipulated, that the two disputed provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia were to be restored to the Turks. But the armistice, as had previously been settled between Napoleon and Alexander, broke up without any such restoration; and a congress, which was held at Jassy for the arrangement of the quarrel between the Porte and Court of St. Petersburgh, having been also dissolved without coming to an agreement, the war between the Turks and Russians recommenced upon the Danube.--S. [99] Jomini, tom. iii., p. 541. [100] Histoire Militaire de la Campagne de Russie en 1812.