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"Your majesty, I also do not believe that he would menace Austria in case he should be driven again to hostilities; he threatens only the Emperor of Austria." "What do you mean, Bubna?" asked the emperor, vehemently.
But the allies were not to be duped into a peace that was no peace. They had good grounds for expecting the eventual aid of Austria; and when Caulaincourt craved an interview, the Czar refused his request, thus bringing affairs once more to the arbitrament of the sword. The only effect of Caulaincourt's mission, and of Napoleon's bitter words to Bubna, was to alarm Austria.
On the 12th of December the Countess Bubna made a last effort to save him; her carriage was ready, she implored him to take it and escape across the frontier. He refused, and next day he was arrested. Austrian legal procedure was slow; the trial of the first Carbonari, Silvio Pellico and his companions, did not take place till 1822.
"Well, well, he will take less than that," exclaimed the emperor. "Then your majesty will graciously negotiate with him on his terms of peace?" asked Count Bubna, joyously.
"My uncle," she replied with downcast eyes, "my uncle brought me the tidings; he told me that Napoleon, through Count Bubna, had sent a courier to Totis, to the Emperor Francis, and asked your condemnation. I hastened to Schönbrunn; I succeeded in overcoming all obstacles and reaching the emperor. I threw myself at his feet, confessed amid my tears that I loved you, begged for your life.
"I will swear that he lives, and that he will live until the return of the courier whom Count Bubna, who is in Schönbrunn attending to the peace negotiations has sent to Totis to the Emperor Francis." The Baroness de Simonie bounded like a tigress through the room, tearing at the bell till it sounded like a tocsin and the servants came rushing in terror from the anteroom.
"I should set out this very day," he said, pacing his cabinet, to his confidential agent Hudelist, the Aulic councillor, "but I should like to see previously Count Bubna, whom I have sent to Bonaparte." "I hope, your majesty, that the count will yet return today," replied Hudelist, in his humble bland voice. "God grant it!" sighed the emperor.
On learning of the victory of Lutzen, and the entrance of the Emperor into Dresden, the Emperor of Austria hastened to send M. de Bubna to his son-in-law. He arrived on the evening of the 16th; and the interview, which his Majesty immediately granted, lasted until two hours after midnight.
Napoleon was taken aback by this boldness, which he attributed to the influence of Spanish affairs and to English intrigues. As for the Hanse Towns and North Germany, he would not hear of letting them go. Bubna thought that Austria would acquiesce. But she had said her last word: she saw that Napoleon was trifling with her until he had disposed of Russia and Prussia.
Napoleon's conferences with Bubna, the Austrian envoy, were frequent and long; but they ended where they began. He was well aware, however, that the Emperor Francis was increasing his military establishment largely, and that a great body of troops was already concentrated behind the mountainous frontier of Bohemia.
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