This judgment is curious, if it is not entirely just, for Lamartine treats with the last contempt the internal work of Napoleon--magnificent administration drawn from the chaos of the Revolution, and which France maintains still--which he calls an "unskilful restoration." As for the Eastern Question, it seems, on the contrary, that the Emperor had had intercourse with it. If he had been the man of Europe, he would have engaged in a merciless hand-to-hand struggle with England; if he had devoted to his Navy a quarter of the attention which he gave to his Army, he would have struck his rival a mortal blow. In place of that, he parries the blows, he forestalls them, he attacks himself, but the mind is elsewhere, farther away, turned no doubt towards the Levant. The Egyptian expedition, despatch of Sebastiani to Constantinople, mission of General Gardane to Teheran, and, above all, efforts constant, perpetual, obstinate to preserve the integrity of the Turkish Empire and bridle the Russian appetite, the Moscow campaign to subdue the Czar, the only troublesome competitor at Constantinople, are they not the tangible proofs of the Eastern desire which the creative and robust imagination of Napoleon did not conceive as a mirage? Did he intend to remake the Roman Empire with its frontiers dispersed over three worlds and perhaps the empire of Alexander with undefined limits. The fall of the eagles has carried away his secret. But at present we are in 1812, on the eve of the Russian expedition. Napoleon has made M. de Nerciat, former attaché to the Gardene mission, and Colonel Boutin start for St. Jean d'Acre and Egypt in order to sound the ground and to prepare the new ways which the victories--he did not imagine the possibility of a defeat--were going to open. Lascaris precedes them then seven or eight years on the desert routes. For what purpose? To prepare the invasion of the Indies? Lamartine affirms it formally and gives Lascaris qualifications and a position of the first importance. What is certain, is that, if Lascaris were the secret agent of Napoleon, he was a remarkable actor and played his part in so masterly a manner that not only the doctor--after all, but little of a physiognomist--but Lady Hester, who was more difficult to deceive, allowed themselves to be duped completely by it. It will be amusing to know Lady Hester's opinion on this subject, if only in order to follow the evolution of a woman's judgment. On returning from her journey to the Emir Mahannah, Lascaris is lauded to the skies. She writes at that time to General Oakes, Governor of Malta: