ves
for postponing it. This ancient project of Russian ambition is a tie
which can bind Russia to France."

For the purposes of this difficult negotiation Napoleon had chosen
Caulaincourt, his devoted servant and most adroit diplomat. Having
been concerned in the expeditions to Strasburg and Ettenheim which
captured Enghien, the ambassador had been deeply, though unjustly,
involved in the disrepute of the execution, and that fact was a tie
which bound him to his master. The two seemed thoroughly to understand
each other. Alexander had chosen an envoy who was the very antipodes
of the adroit and elegant Caulaincourt. Count Tolstoi was a bluff
soldier, selected in the belief that he would be uninfluenced by the
intrigues of Paris society, and could secure the utmost return for the
agreement of Tilsit by direct negotiation with the Emperor himself, as
one old soldier talking with another. This officer was instructed to
lay great stress on the liberation of Prussia, but to remember that
the object of his mission was to cement harmony and confidence. On the
journey to Paris he paused at Memel to pay his respects to Frederick
William and his Queen. He found them, considering their station,
actually in want, dependent on the Czar's gifts of clothes and other
necessaries for the little personal comfort they enjoyed. This made a
deep impression on Tolstoi's heart, and though received at Paris with
such distinction as had never been accorded to any other ambassador,
he was cold and distant with both the Emperor and the court. At last
there was positive disagreement between him and the great personages
of the capital; there was even a rumor that Ney and he would fight a
duel. The offensive remarks which led to such tension were due to a
statement by Tolstoi that Russia had been beaten by accident, that
Russian soldiers were invincible, and might one day take their
revenge.

Moreover, the ambassador could not even get on with Napoleon. Both he
and his staff avoided the splendors of Fontainebleau, preferring to
frequent the drawing-rooms of a notorious actress whose name had often
been linked with that of the Emperor. Under such circumstances
diplomacy gathered but little fruit. Napoleon offered both the
Danubian provinces for Silesia, or else the evacuation of Prussia
proper for that of Wallachia; he even mentioned the magic word
"Constantinople" as part of Russia's share in an eventual partition of
the whole Turkish empire. Tol