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For my part I was so seized with pain and terror when apprised of the dreadful tidings that my convalescing daughter, perceiving my state of prostration, became again ill. After dinner I hastened to Princess Dolgoruki's, whither Count Cobentzel brought us the news every ten minutes from the palace.
She had been most kind to me in my early youth, and I resumed the agreeable habit of supping at her house, where I often met the valiant Prince Nassau, so formidable in a fight, so gentle and modest in a salon. I also made frequent visits at the house of the Countess de Rombec, sister of Count Cobentzel. The Countess de Rombec gathered about her the most distinguished society of Vienna.
In order to accelerate this result as far as in me lies, and to put an end at once to the state of uncertainty we remain in, and which has already lasted too long, I have determined to despatch to the place of the present negotiations Comte de Cobentzel, a man who possesses my most unlimited confidence, and who is instructed as to my intentions and furnished with my most ample powers.
I do not believe this; but if it be true, Cobentzel shall be arrested and shot along with them. I will let the Bourbons know I am not to be trifled with." The above statement of facts accounts for the suppositions respecting the probable influence of the Jacobins in this affair.
Cobentzel and Joseph Bonaparte had remained at Luneville during the resumption of hostilities, negotiating mutual concessions, of which the cannon every day altered the conditions.
Indignant at finding that his reiterated demands for the erasure of my name from the list of emigrants had been slighted, and that, in spite of his representations, conveyed to Paris by General Bernadotte, Louis Bonaparte, and others, I was still included in that fatal list, he apostrophised M. Bottot at dinner one day, before forty individuals, among whom were the diplomatists Gallo, Cobentzel, and Meerweldt.
The armistice had been prolonged for eighty-five days, and the Emperor of Austria had paid for this moment of peace by the surrender of the cities of Ulm, Philipsburg, and Ingoldstadt; the preliminaries, which Cobentzel had drawn out to great length, had brought about no result. Austria refused to negotiate without England, to whom she was allied by a treaty of subsidies.
In order to accelerate this result as far as in me lies, and to put an end at once to the state of uncertainty we remain in, and which has already lasted too long, I have determined to despatch to the place of the present negotiations Comte de Cobentzel, a man who possesses my most unlimited confidence, and who is instructed as to my intentions and furnished with my most ample powers.
This author adds that Barras, having intercepted a letter of Buonaparte to Cobentzel, went to him late one evening, and commanded him to join the fleet instantly, on pain of being denounced as the enemy of the government; that the general ordered his horses the same hour, and was on his way to Toulon ere midnight. These circumstances may or may not be truly given.
"Yes," said Cobentzel. "Well," continued Napoleon, dropping it to the floor, where it was shattered into a thousand pieces, "do you see it now?" "I do," said Cobentzel; "what then?" "It has a mate," said Napoleon, significantly; "and if you do not accept my ultimatum I'll smash the other one upon your plain but honest countenance." Cobentzel accepted the ultimatum.
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