Although he bragged that he was a better man than Bonaparte, he yielded to the silent, invisible pressure of the little Corsican, and he went to take command of the unemployed army of the Rhine. In a few months the same fine, Italian hand transferred him to the command of the tenth division in Perpignan, where he gradually, if not gracefully, disappeared from the political horizon. The negotiation for final peace between Austria and France continued to drag its slow length along. Diplomats on either side exhausted the skill of their trade, each trying to outwit the other. How many crooked things were done during those weary months, how many bribes were offered and taken, how many secrets were bought and sold, how much finesse was practised, how many lies were told, only a professional and experienced diplomatist would be competent to guess. Into all these wire-drawn subtleties of negotiation Napoleon threw a new element,--military abruptness, the gleam of the sword. Not that he lacked subtlety, for he was full of it. Not that he was unable to finesse, for he was an expert. Not that he scorned to lie, for he delighted in artistic deception. But on such points as these the veteran Cobentzel and the other old-time diplomats could meet him on something like an equality. To throw in a new element altogether, to hide his perfect skill as a machinator under the brusque manners of a rude soldier, was to take the professionals at a disadvantage. Just as the Hungarian veteran had complained that Napoleon would not fight according to rule, Cobentzel and his band were now embarrassed to find that he would not treat by established precedent. Wearied with delays, indignant that they should threaten him with a renewal of the war, and determined to startle the antiquated Austrian envoys into a decision, Napoleon is said to have sprung up from his seat, apparently in furious wrath, exclaiming, “Very well, then! Let the war begin again, but remember! I will shatter your monarchy in three months, as I now shatter this vase,” dashing to the floor a precious vase which Catherine II. of Russia had given Cobentzel. This story, told by so many, is denied by about an equal number. Cobentzel himself contradicted it, but he makes an admission which almost amounts to the same thing. He says that Napoleon became irritated by the delays, worked himself into a passion, tossed off glass after glass of punch, became rude to the negotiators, flung out of the room, and required a good deal of pacification at the hands of his aides. Says Cobentzel: “He started up in a rage, poured out a flood of abuse, put on his hat in the conference room itself” (an awful thing to do!), “and left us. He behaved as if he had just escaped from a lunatic asylum.”