"Since the date of my last I have had many interviews with the Minister of Foreign Relations. I have explained several points, and urged every argument for as speedy an answer to my note of the 10th as its very serious importance would allow. He always treats the subject with apparent candor and solicitude, seems anxious to gain information, and declares that neither he nor the emperor had before understood American affairs, and always assures me that he is nearly ready with his answer. But he says the emperor's taking so long a time to consider it and make up his decision is not without reason, for it opens a wide field for meditation on very interesting matters. He says the emperor has read the note repeatedly and with great attention--that he told him the reasoning in it was everywhere just and the conclusions undeniable, but to reconcile its principles with his continental system presented difficulties not easy to remove. From what the emperor told me himself at the last diplomatic audience, and from a variety of hints and other circumstances remarked among the people about his person, I have been made to believe that he is really changing his system relative to our trade, and that the answer to my note will be more satisfactory than I had at first expected." Several other letters from the poet to Monroe follow, all of the same general tenor--complaining of delay, yet hopeful that the treaty would shortly be secured. February 8, 1812, he writes to the Secretary of State that the duke is "at work upon the treaty, and probably in good earnest, but the discussions with Russia and the other affairs of this Continent give him and the emperor so much occupation that I cannot count upon their getting on very fast with ours." Amid these delays the summer passed away, and the emperor, intent on mapping out his great campaign against Russia, still neglected to sign the important instrument. Early in the summer Napoleon left Paris for Wilna to take command of the vast armies that had been collected for the invasion, and from that place, on the 11th of October, the duke de Bassano addressed the following note to Mr. Barlow in Paris: