The Tsar obtained the provinces he wanted on the Danube without being pledged to more than an attack on Austria if she joined with England against France. In one other important matter Talleyrand more or less deceived Napoleon. The Emperor detained him one night with a pathetic reference to his childlessness, and at last “dropped the word divorce.” He would like to marry one of Alexander’s sisters, and Talleyrand might, “as a Frenchman,” suggest the idea to the Tsar. Towards two o’clock he went to the usual rendezvous, and found the Tsar telling the Princess with some feeling how Napoleon had that morning referred to his want of an heir. It had been “wrung from him.” Talleyrand not only knew the alliance was impossible from the Russian point of view, but considered it inadvisable for the country. He told the Tsar of Napoleon’s wish, and they agreed to humour him for the time by suggesting Anna, who was only fourteen years old. The long series of fêtes and spectacles wore on meantime. One day Napoleon sent his actors to Weimar, and, after a hunt on the very field of Jena, entertained the princes to a banquet. The opera that night was unhappily chosen, “La mort de César,” but a ball was added that “dissipated the impression.” Napoleon made an effort to dazzle Goethe and Wieland with the brilliancy of his culture. Goethe made quiet and neat replies to the Emperor’s forced and well-prepared sallies into literature. Talleyrand has preserved an account of the conversation, but omitted one of its best passages. When Napoleon said he did not like the end of “Werther,” Goethe replied: “I did not know that your Majesty liked romances to have an end.” Wieland took up the defence of Tacitus against Napoleon. “I agree,” he said, “that his chief aim is to punish tyrants; but he denounces them to the justice of the ages and of the human race.” When, on the day before his departure, the crowd of princes and nobles gathered about Napoleon—“I did not see a single hand pass with any dignity over the lion’s mane,” says Talleyrand—he turned again to the literary men, and asked if they had any idealists in Germany. They had many. “I pity you,” he replied. “These philosophers torture themselves with the creation of systems. They will search in vain for a better one than Christianity, which reconciles man with himself, and at the same time assures public order and the tranquility of States.” The feelings of the “idealists” are not recorded. Talleyrand himself disappoints us. He had Goethe to dinner one evening, and does not reproduce a word of the conversation, or devote a single line to appreciation of the greatest man in that historic gathering.