my belonging to the confederacy, to preserve the peace, and
enforce its decrees, consisting of two hundred and seventy thousand
infantry, fifty thousand cavalry, two hundred cannon, and one hundred
and twenty ships of war.

This plan was by no means so chimerical as at first glance it might seem
to be. The sagacious Sully examined it in all its details, and gave it
his cordial support. The cooeperation of two or three of the leading
powers would have invested the plan with sufficient moral and physical
support to render its success even probable. But the single poniard of
the monk Ravaillac arrested it all.

The Emperor Napoleon I. had formed essentially the same plan, with the
same humane desire to put an end to interminable wars; but he had
adopted far nobler principles of toleration. "One of my great plans,"
said he at St. Helena, "was the rejoining, the concentration of those
same geographical nations which have been disunited and parcelled out by
revolution and policy. There are dispersed in Europe upwards of thirty
millions of French, fifteen millions of Spaniards, fifteen millions of
Italians, and thirty millions of Germans. It was my intention to
incorporate these several people each into one nation. It would have
been a noble thing to have advanced into posterity with such a train,
and attended by the blessings of future ages. I felt myself worthy of
this glory.

"After this summary simplification, it would have been possible to
indulge the chimera of the _beau ideal_ of civilization. In this state
of things there would have been some chance of establishing in every
country a unity of codes, of principles, of opinions, of sentiments,
views and interests. Then perhaps, by the help of the universal
diffusion of knowledge, one might have thought of attempting in the
great human family the application of the American Congress, or the
Amphictyons of Greece. What a perspective of power, grandeur, happiness
and prosperity would thus have appeared.

"The concentration of thirty or forty millions of Frenchmen was
completed and perfected. That of fifteen millions of Spaniards was
nearly accomplished. Because I did not subdue the Spaniards, it will
henceforth be argued that they were invincible, for nothing is more
common than to convert accident into principle. But the fact is that
they were actually conquered, and, at the very moment when they escaped
me, the Cortes of Cadiz were secretly in treaty with me. They wer