For some weeks previous, France had continued to fit out armaments in
her ports, destined, it was declared, and probably with truth, to
confirm her colonial power in the West Indies and America, and to make
good her commercial standing in the Levant and farther Orient. These
movements, as well as those of her troops, were declared by the
English to be preparations solely intended for the renewal of the war.
On Friday, February seventeenth, Whitworth, contrary to all diplomatic
precedent, had been summoned to the Tuileries, where he was received
by Bonaparte with "tolerable cordiality," to use the ambassador's own
words, and seated on one side of the First Consul's table in his
private cabinet, while the chief of state dropped into a chair on the
other, and began without ceremony to state his views concerning the
situation. Acknowledging his irritation at the mistrust shown by
England in interpreting the treaty of Amiens, he categorically refused
to acquiesce in the continued occupation of Malta and Alexandria by
her, but disclaimed any intention of either seizing Egypt or going to
war. Expatiating on the respective forces of England and France, he
strove to prove that neither could gain anything by going to war. On
many occasions antecedent to this Bonaparte had emphatically stated
his conviction that the Western world was a unit, face to face with
the other unit, the Oriental world. Their reciprocity is the life of
the globe. On this occasion he flatly asked why the two Western powers
of the first magnitude, one mistress of the seas, the other mistress
of the land, should not arrange to coöperate and govern the world. But
Whitworth was no philosopher, and, mindful of his instructions, he
gave no sign of taking notice. In conclusion, therefore, the First
Consul demanded the speedy evacuation of Malta as the event on which
must turn peace or war. If he had really desired war, he said, he
could have seized Egypt a month earlier without difficulty. Whitworth
made the rejoinders which had been used all along, and when about to
instance the territories and influence gained by France was
interrupted by Bonaparte with apparent temper. "I suppose you mean
Piedmont and Switzerland. Those are trifles,"--"The expression he made
use of," Whitworth interrupts the quotation to say, "was too trivial
and vulgar to find a place in a despatch, or anywhere but in the mouth
of a hackney-coachman,"--"and it must have been foreseen," continued
Bonaparte, "while the negotiation was pending. Vous n'avez pas le
droit d'en parler à cette heure." ["Now you have no right to speak of
it."] Napoleon said of his own temper that it never went below his
neck; and as to his vulgar expression, any French scholar can supply
it and see that Whitworth did right not to report it; for to translate
it would have been to distort the proportions of its significance.
Moreover, the English diplomat must have felt the truth of Bonaparte's