would be a serious matter if she should conclude a treaty with two allies who might be beaten before she could herself take the field. Hence nothing disturbed the impenetrable front of the Danube power; her own plans were maturing slowly but surely, and while the enormous French reinforcements in central Europe were in a sense a menace, she threw a strong military cordon upon the frontiers of Galicia, and haughtily held aloof from anything likely to fetter her own ambitions. [Footnote 3: On the refusal of Russia and Prussia to join Austria, see Vandal: Napoleon et Alexandre Ier, Vol. I, Chapitre Preliminaire.] CHAPTER III AN INDECISIVE VICTORY: FRIEDLAND[4] [Footnote 4: References as before.] The State of France -- Remedies Proposed by the Emperor -- Napoleon's Self-Indulgence -- Perplexities of both Combatants in Poland -- Opening of the Campaign -- Heilsberg -- Friedland -- The Result Indecisive -- The Strategic Problem -- The Statesman's Point of View -- The Armistice -- Napoleon's Resolution -- The Czar's Obligations to Prussia -- His Attitude toward Napoleon. The situation in Paris was even less satisfactory to Napoleon than that in the rest of Europe. Then, as now, France was too much like one of those interesting creatures called by the pleasant scientific name of cephalopod--all head except a few tentacles; so we say Paris, and not France. Imperial interests rested on two supports, Paris and the rest of the world. When Napoleon withdrew behind the Passarge, not all the fictions which his fertile brain could devise and his busy agents spread were sufficient to deceive the astute operators of the Paris exchange. Accordingly, the price of French government bonds went down with a serious drop; England having announced soon afterward that she meant to land a great army on the shores of the Baltic, public confidence was further shaken. A year before, the French nation had been startled by the premature demand for more French youth; the new call to anticipate the conscription filled them with consternation. These were grave matters, and the roads from Paris to Osterode and Finkenstein continually resounded under the hoofs of horses and the roll of wheels as messengers sped back and forth with questions and replies. The nature of this correspondence shows how perfectly the government of France was centralized in Napoleon's person, even in his absence at such a distance: the whole gamut of administration was run, from state questions of the gravest importance down to the disposition of trivial affairs connected with the opera and its coryphees. As to reviving the finances, the Emperor was at his wit's end, and in a sort of blind helplessness he ordered the state to lend five hundred thousand francs per month to such manufacturers as would keep at work and deposit their wares in a government storehouse as collateral; nor