The words of men who have occupied positions in any degree similar to that of Prince Metternich are apt to be picked up, remembered, and recorded, when in truth the only value of the utterances in question is to show that such men do occasionally think and speak like other mortals! And my notebooks are not without similar evidences of _gobemoucherie_ on my own part. But there is one subject on which I have heard Metternich speak words which really are worth recording. That subject was the Emperor Napoleon Buonaparte. Of course on such a topic the Austrian statesman might have said much that he was not at liberty to say; and there was also much that he might have said which could not have found place in one halfhour’s conversation. The particular point upon which I heard him speak was the celebrated interview, at which the emperor lost his temper because he could not induce Austria to declare war. Metternich described the way in which the emperor, with the manners of the guard-room rather than those of the council-chamber, suddenly and violently tossed his cocked hat into the corner of the room, “evidently expecting that I should pick it up and present it to him,” said the old statesman; “but I judged it better to ignore the action and the intention altogether, and his majesty after a minute or two rose and picked it up himself.” He went on to express his conviction that all this display of passion on the emperor’s part was altogether affected, fictitious, and calculated; and said that similar manifestations of intemperate violence were by no means infrequently used by the emperor with a view to produce calculated effects, and were often more or less successful. It would be a great mistake to suppose that the most cynical observer could have detected the slightest shade of bitterness in the words or the manner of Prince Metternich. On _that_ field of battle at all events the honours did not fall to the share of Napoleon. And his aged adversary spoke of the encounter with the amused pleasantry and easy smile of a veteran who recounts passages at arms in which his part has been that best worth telling.