eyrand. Marbois intimated that
he was not ignorant of the affair and invited Livingston to a further
conversation. Although Monroe had already arrived in Paris and was now
apprised of this sudden turn of affairs, Livingston went alone to the
Treasury Office and there in conversation, which was prolonged until
midnight, he fenced with Marbois over a fair price for Louisiana.
The First Consul, said Marbois, demanded one hundred million francs.
Livingston demurred at this huge sum. The United States did not want
Louisiana but was willing to give ten million dollars for New Orleans
and the Floridas. What would the United States give then? asked Marbois.
Livingston replied that he would have to confer with Monroe. Finally
Marbois suggested that if they would name sixty million francs, (less
than $12,000,000) and assume claims which Americans had against the
French Treasury for twenty million more, he would take the offer under
advisement. Livingston would not commit himself, again insisting that he
must consult Monroe.

So important did this interview seem to Livingston that he returned
to his apartment and wrote a long report to Madison without waiting
to confer with Monroe. It was three o'clock in the morning when he was
done. "We shall do all we can to cheapen the purchase," he wrote, "but
my present sentiment is that we shall buy."

History does not record what Monroe said when his colleague revealed
these midnight secrets. But in the prolonged negotiations which followed
Monroe, though ill, took his part, and in the end, on April 30, 1803,
set his hand to the treaty which ceded Louisiana to the United States on
the terms set by Marbois. In two conventions bearing the same date, the
commissioners bound the United States to pay directly to France the sum
of sixty million francs ($11,250,000) and to assume debts owed by France
to American citizens, estimated at not more than twenty million francs
($3,750,000). Tradition says that after Marbois, Monroe, and Livingston
had signed their names, Livingston remarked: "We have lived long, but
this is the noblest work of our lives.... From this day the United
States take their place among the powers of the first rank."

CHAPTER V. IN PURSUIT OF THE FLORIDAS

The purchase of Louisiana was a diplomatic triumph of the first
magnitude. No American negotiators have ever acquired so much for
so little; yet, oddly enough, neither Livingston nor Monroe had the
slightest notion of