ound the table laid out;
but that, in future, we could no longer live at the expense of Germany,
since she had become our ally; but, on the contrary, it would be
necessary to support her contingents, and that without any hope of
remuneration, whatever the result might be; that we should have to pay
at Paris for every ration of bread which would be consumed at Moscow, as
the new scenes of action offered us no harvest to reap, independent of
glory, but cordage, pitch, and shipping-tackle, which would certainly go
but a small way towards the discharge of the expenses of a continental
war. That France was not in a condition to subsidize all Europe in this
manner, especially at a moment when her resources were drained by the
war in Spain; that it was like lighting a fire at both ends at once,
which, gaining ground upon the centre, exhausted by so many
efforts,--would probably end in consuming ourselves."

[Footnote 6: Count Mollien.]

[Footnote 7: The Duke of Gaeta.]

This minister was listened to; the emperor surveyed him with a smiling
air, accompanied with one of his familiar caresses. He imagined that he
had secured conviction, but Napoleon said to him,--"So you think that I
shall not be able to find a paymaster to discharge the expenses of the
war?" The duke endeavoured to learn upon whom the burden was to fall,
when the emperor, by a single word, disclosing all the grandeur of his
designs, closed the lips of his astonished minister.

He estimated, however, but too accurately all the difficulties of his
enterprise. It was that, perhaps, which drew upon him the reproach of
availing himself of a method which he had rejected in the Austrian war,
and of which the celebrated Pitt had set the example in 1793.

Towards the end of 1811, the prefect of police at Paris learnt, it was
said, that a printer was secretly counterfeiting Russian bank-bills; he
ordered him to be arrested; the printer resisted; but in the result his
house was broken into, and himself taken before the magistrate, whom he
astonished by his assurance, and still more by his appeal from the
minister of police. This printer was instantly released: it has even
been added, that he continued his counterfeiting employment; and that,
from the moment of our first advance into Lithuania, we propagated the
report that we had gained possession at Wilna of several millions of
Russian bank-bills in the military chests of the hostile army.

Whatever may have been th