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"I don't know," said Melas. "Only a priest could tell that." "Then take it to a priest," said Lydia. "It is not my sheep," said Melas. "It belongs to Pericles." "Then you must take it to him and let him decide what shall be done with it," cried Lydia. "And go soon, I beg of you. I don't wish to have the creature in the house. It may be bewitched. It may bring all kinds of bad luck to us."
However, the event was so instantaneous, the disorder so complete, and the change of fortune so sudden, that it is not surprising there should be no positive account of the circumstances which attended his death. Early next morning the Prince of Liechtenstein came from General Melas with negotiations to the First Consul.
Her faithful clinging to hope was rewarded, for when one day, with drooping head, she returned home from another futile errand, she found Hannibal Melas there, as bearer of important news.
It was the little Maltese choir boy, Hannibal Melas, who owed so much to her recommendation. He asked sympathizingly what troubled her and, after Barbara had confided to him what she had hitherto vainly desired, he referred her unasked to his omnipotent master, who was to enter King Philip's service, and proposed that she should come to his office early the next morning.
At Marengo I was weak enough to allow the troops of Melas to march out of Alessandria. He promised to treat for peace. What happened? Two months after Moreau had to fight with the garrison of Alessandria. Besides, this war is not an ordinary war. After the conduct of your Government I am not bound to keep any terms with it. I have no faith in its promises. You have attacked me.
If Melas had had the firmness which ought to belong to the leader of an army if he had compared the respective positions of the two parties if he had considered that there was no longer time to regain his line of operations and recover his communication with the Hereditary States, that he was master of all the strong places in Italy, that he had nothing to fear from Massena, that Suchet could not resist him: if, then, following Bonaparte's' example, he had marched upon Lyons, what would have become of the First Consul?
Austria, alone, had in the field at this time a force of two hundred thousand men, half of whom belonged to the army of Italy under Melas. To make head against the united forces of England and Austria, with a defeated army, an exhausted treasury, and a disunited people, was the difficult task of Bonaparte.
That day were repaired the faults of Scherer, whose inertness and imbecility had paralysed everything, and who had fled, and been constantly beaten, from the Adriatic to Mont Cenis. The Prince of Liechtenstein begged to return to render an account of his mission to General Melas. He came back in the evening, and made many observations on the hard nature of the conditions.
The blockade of Genoa had been kept up all this time; while Suchet resolutely maintained the last line of defence on the old frontier of France. On the 22nd of May Melas made a desperate effort to force the passage of the Var, but failed; and immediately afterwards received his first intelligence of the movements of Buonaparte, and the defeat of his own detachment at the bridge of Chiusilla.
The needs of government recalled him to France; the conditions he proposed to Melas, although hard, were such as could be accepted. The Austrian army was authorized to retire with the honors of war; but it was to surrender to the French troops all its positions in Liguria, Piedmont, Lombardy, and the Legations, whilst evacuating the Italian territory as far as the Mincio.
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