Much is told of the alleged system of newspaper spies employed by English and American "yellow" papers, which are said by the uninitiated to employ their corps of spy detectives in the same way as an established secret service employs its special agents. In America it is quite certain that since the so-called "yellows" depend to the larger extent on the providing of purely "police" news to their clients, a certain amount of espionage becomes part of the work of the daily reporter. During the course of the notorious Thaw trial, in the last decade, witnesses of all sorts—including the young wife of Thaw—were subjected to the attentions of reporters who, by following their social movements, were able to add suggestive tit-bits to the "stories" appearing daily and nightly in the papers, and much to the surprise and annoyance of their victims. As far as we know, however, nothing of the kind has yet entered into the processes of British journalism. XVIII NAPOLEON, HIS MISTRESS AND—A SPY The authorities for the following story are these:—_Correspondence of Napoleon_, vol. v.; _Memoirs of Bourrienne_, vol. ii.; _Memoirs of Prince Eugene_, vol. i.; _Memoirs of the Duchesse d'Abrantés_, vol. iii. Except to very minute students of the Napoleonic legend, it is not very well known, nor could the episode be said to rise very much above the commonplace, were it not for the extraordinary personality of the central figure around whom the incidents play. It is simply with a view to showing the operations of what has been called "the long arm of British diplomacy" that we tell the tale of an attempt to put a term to Bonaparte's ambitions as early as 1798, when the Corsican had only reached his thirtieth year. It is customary to say that historic figures, no matter how great or spectacular their enterprises, are never—or rarely ever—so magnificent, in the classical sense, to the eyes of their contemporaries as they prove afterwards to succeeding generations. It took the battle of Austerlitz, for example, to force Benjamin Constant and Madame de Staël, to say nothing of the Bourbon Princes, as well as a host of public men of note, into a full and final realisation that in the person of Napoleon an elemental force had appeared in Europe whose activities in the world were not to stop till, to use the great soldier's own memorable phrase, Nature had ceased to require him as an instrument of its designs. And we all know the story of how the younger Pitt received the intelligence of that conflict of a December midday: "Roll up the map of Europe," he is alleged to have said, "it will not be required these ten years"—which was prophecy with almost mathematical accuracy, if we may use such a term. The truth is, however, that seven years previously, British diplomacy had already gauged the significance of the new world-portent, and by 1800 plans were already laid to fight the coming menace to the principle of the balance of power.