But you will do
all this rather than leave me in possession of my power, though I
tell you that I wish to fight no more, but long for repose. Is it
not so?"
"Sire," said Count Meerfeldt, in a low voice, "the allied sovereigns
are, perhaps, familiar with the words of Caesar, who said that
laurels, if they were not to wither, should be often bathed in
hostile blood, and fed every year with soil from new fields of
victory. Your majesty being the modern Caesar, the allies may be
afraid lest you should adopt this maxim."
"Yes," cried Napoleon, "you are afraid of the very sleep of the
lion; you fear that you will never be easy before having pared his
nails and cut his mane. Well, then, after you have placed him in
this predicament, what will be the consequence? Have the allied
sovereigns reflected? You think only of repairing, by a single
stroke, the calamities of twenty years; and, carried away by this
idea, you never perceive the changes which time has made around you,
and that for Austria to gain now, at the expense of France, is to
lose. Tell your sovereign to take that into consideration, Count
Meerfeldt; it is neither Austria, nor France, nor Prussia, singly,
that will be able to arrest on the Vistula the inundation of a half-
nomadic people essentially conquering, and whose dominions extend to
China. I comprehend, however, that in order to make peace, I must
make sacrifices and I am ready to do so.
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