Labouchère was unable to get anything more definite out of him. But Wellesley, reserved with the French agent, opened himself more fully to his old friend Sir Francis Baring. To him he explained that no member of the Cabinet believed in Napoleon's good {8} faith. He personally saw nothing in Labouchère's mission but a trap laid for English public opinion by the supreme adventurer, and judged that nothing was to be gained by playing into his hand. Moreover, the Government would never abandon Spain to Joseph or Sicily to Murat, and would in no circumstances consent to the loss of Malta. The fullest preliminary assurances on these points were the _sine qua non_ of any successful negotiation. Sir Francis Baring, who was a sagacious man, communicated this conversation, together with his personal comments thereon, to Labouchère. It was evident, he said, that England had grown accustomed to the war, and would not abandon it except under the stress of a reverse impossible to predict, and that the nation would never lose all they had fought for in the Peninsula by yielding Spain to a Buonaparte prince. He suggested, without any official authority, an arrangement which, leaving Malta to England, would give Naples to Murat, Sicily to the Neapolitan Bourbons, and would restore Spain to Ferdinand, save for the provinces on the French side of the Ebro, which might be given to Napoleon as an indemnity for the expenses of the war. Convinced that nothing further was to be obtained in London, Labouchère returned to Holland and sent to King Louis at Paris the meagre results of his mission. Unfortunately, Napoleon was as well accustomed to war as England. As soon as he had received Labouchère's reply, he gave up the notion of using Holland as a weapon against England and determined to settle his affairs with his brother independently of the general situation. Nevertheless, he did not wish to entirely let fall the indirect relations on which Labouchère had entered with the English Cabinet, and sent him a reply to be transmitted through Sir Francis Baring to Lord Wellesley. The Emperor's reply was perhaps more statesmanlike than might have been expected. If England was accustomed to the war, the French were even more in their element on the battlefield. France was victorious, rich, prosperous, obliged, {9} no doubt, to pay a high price for sugar and coffee, but not reduced to the point of doing without those luxuries. She could support the situation for a long time yet. If, in these conditions, he thought of peace, it was because in the new position created by his marriage with an Austrian archduchess he was anxious to terminate the struggle between the old order and the new. As for the kingdoms he had created, it was not to be thought that he would sacrifice any of them. Never would he dethrone his brothers Joseph, Murat, Louis, and Jerome. But the destinies of Portugal and Sicily were still in suspense; these two countries, Hanover, the