But the service rendered by Talleyrand to Napoleon during that winter in Poland was considerable. Napoleon did not at first set a stirring example. He fell into a period of sensuality, and, says Talleyrand, “laid his glory publicly enough at the feet of a beautiful Pole.” The Countess Anastase Walewska, then only seventeen years old, aspired to influence the Emperor in the interest of her country, and only succeeded in making the winter pass pleasantly for him at the castle of Finkenstein. Von Gagern, who met her and her son afterwards at Paris, was at Warsaw, and says that Talleyrand told him one day he was unwilling any longer to be “an instrument in the hand of the destroying angel of Europe.” He was at that time acting, not only as diplomatic minister in the continuous correspondence with Austria and Prussia, but as chief military agent. Napoleon had appointed an incompetent governor at Warsaw, and had enjoined Talleyrand to see to the commissariat and transport of the army. “To-day,” the Emperor writes on March 12th, “the fate of Europe and the greatest calculations depend on supplies. It will be child’s play to beat the Russians if I have food. Whatever you do will be done well. The charge I entrust to you is more important than all the negotiations in the world.” The hundred letters that Talleyrand writes to him during those four months—letters clearly written with his own hand—reflect an amazing activity. He is seeing, amid tremendous difficulties, that the Emperor gets 50,000 rations of biscuits and 2,000 pints of brandy, and so on, every day: he has had to settle a strike of the transport servants and the bakers: he has been round the military hospitals, distributing gifts from the Emperor, and “listening to the little requests” of the wounded soldiers; he sends the latest information about the state of the roads and the finances, the movements of the enemy, the dissipations of the Court at Warsaw, the important and interesting passages in the French and English journals, the progress of negotiations with Austria, Turkey, Prussia, &c. His carriage is fired at by guerillas as he travels, or sticks in the mud for hours together. He has at times to put up with the most wretched accommodation.