“Well, Monsieur Otto, our Ambassador, was kept terribly busy over that treaty, and all of his staff were worked to death.  We had not Pitt to deal with, which was, perhaps, as well for us.  He was a terrible man that Pitt, and wherever half a dozen enemies of France were plotting together, there was his sharp-pointed nose right in the middle of them.  The nation, however, had been thoughtful enough to put him out of office, and we had to do with Monsieur Addington.  But Milord Hawkesbury was the Foreign Minister, and it was with him that we were obliged to do our bargaining.

“You can understand that it was no child’s play.  After ten years of war each nation had got hold of a great deal which had belonged to the other, or to the other’s allies.  What was to be given back, and what was to be kept?  Is this island worth that peninsula?  If we do this at Venice, will you do that at Sierra Leone?  If we give up Egypt to the Sultan, will you restore the Cape of Good Hope, which you have taken from our allies the Dutch?  So we wrangled and wrestled, and I have seen Monsieur Otto come back to the Embassy so exhausted that his secretary and I had to help him from his carriage to his sofa.  But at last things adjusted themselves, and the night came round when the treaty was to be finally signed.  Now, you must know that the one great card which we held, and which we played, played, played at every point of the game, was that we had Egypt.  The English were very nervous about our being there.  It gave us a foot at each end of the Mediterranean, you see.  And they were not sure that that wonderful little Napoleon of ours might not make it the base of an advance against India.  So whenever Lord Hawkesbury proposed to retain anything, we had only to reply, ’In that case, of course, we cannot consent to evacuate Egypt,’ and in this way we quickly brought him to reason.  It was by the help of Egypt that we gained terms which were remarkably favourable, and especially that we caused the English to consent to give up the Cape of Good Hope.  We did not wish your people, monsieur, to have any foothold in South Africa, for history has taught us that the British foothold of one half-century is the British Empire of the next.  It is not your army or your navy against which we have to guard, but it is your terrible younger son and your man in search of a career.  When we French have a possession across the seas, we like to sit in Paris and to felicitate ourselves upon it.  With you it is different.  You take your wives and your children, and you run away to see what kind of place this may be, and after that we might as well try to take that old Square of Bloomsbury away from you.