Stung to the quick by these continual invectives, Napoleon so far descended from his dignity as to make them the subject of personal complaint and reproach to the English Ambassador. He obtruded himself on the department of Talleyrand, and attempted to shake the resolution of the ambassador, Lord Whitworth, by a display of rude violence, such as had, indeed, succeeded with the Austrian envoy at Campo-Formio, but which produced no effect whatever in the case of this calm and high-spirited nobleman. The first of their conferences took place in February, when the Consul harangued Lord Whitworth for nearly two hours, hardly permitting him to interpose a word on the other side of the question. "Every gale that blows from England is burdened with enmity," said he; "your government countenances Georges, Pichegru, and other infamous men, who have sworn to assassinate me. Your journals slander me, and the redress I am offered is but adding mockery to insult. I could make myself master of Egypt to-morrow, if I pleased. _Egypt, indeed, must sooner or later belong to France_; but I have no wish to go to war for such a trivial object. What could I gain by war? Invasion would be my only means of annoying you; and invasion you shall have, if war be forced on me--but I confess the chances would be an hundred to one against me in such an attempt. In ten years I could not hope to have a fleet able to dispute the seas with you: but, on the other hand, the army of France could be recruited in a few weeks to 480,000 men. United, we might govern the world:--Why can we not understand each other?" Lord Whitworth could not but observe the meaning of these hints, and answered, as became him, that the King of England had no wish but to preserve his own rights, and scorned the thought of becoming a partner with France in a general scheme of spoliation and oppression. They parted with cold civility, and negotiations were resumed in the usual manner: but England stood firm in the refusal to give up Malta--at least for ten years to come. The aggressions of Napoleon had wholly changed the arrangement of territory and power contemplated when the treaty of Amiens was drawn up; what security could there be for the retention of Malta by Naples, or any such minor power, if Buonaparte wished to have it? To surrender it would in fact be to yield an impregnable harbour and citadel in the heart of the Levant, to a government which had gone on trampling down the independence of state after state in the west. Meanwhile the English government openly announced, in Parliament, that the position of affairs seemed to be full of alarm--that the French were manning fleets and recruiting their armies, and that it was necessary to have recourse to similar measures; and, accordingly, a considerable addition to the military establishment was agreed to.