We can therefore only guess at what transpired, from the vague descriptions of the two men themselves.  They are characteristic enough:  “I never had more prejudices against anyone than against him,” said Alexander afterwards; “but, after three-quarters of an hour of conversation, they all disappeared like a dream”; and later he exclaimed:  “Would that I had seen him sooner:  the veil is torn aside and the time of error is past.”  As for Napoleon, he wrote to Josephine:  “I have just seen the Emperor Alexander:  I have been very pleased with him:  he is a very handsome, good, and young Emperor:  he has an intellect above what is commonly attributed to him."[145] The tone of these remarks strikes the keynote of all the conversations that followed.  At the next day’s conference, also held in the sumptuous pavilion erected on the raft, the King of Prussia was present; but towards him Napoleon’s demeanour was cold and threatening.  He upbraided him with the war, lectured him on the duty of a king to his people, and bade him dismiss Hardenberg.  Frederick William listened for the most part in silence; his nature was too stiff and straightforward to practise any Byzantine arts; but when his trusty Minister was attacked, he protested that he should not know how to replace him.  Napoleon had foreseen the plea and at once named three men who would give better advice.  Among them was the staunch patriot Stein!

From the ensuing conferences the King was almost wholly excluded.  They were held in a part of the town of Tilsit which was neutralized for that purpose, as also for the guards and diplomatists of the three sovereigns.  There, too, lived the two Emperors in closest intercourse, while on most days the Prussian King rode over from a neighbouring village to figure as a sad, reproachful guest at the rides, parades, and dinners that cemented the new Franco-Russian alliance.  Yet, amid all the melodious raptures of Alexander over Napoleon’s newly discovered virtues, it is easy to detect the clinging ground-tone of Muscovite ambition.  An event had occurred which excited the hopes of both Emperors.  At the close of May, the Sultan Selim was violently deposed by the Janissaries who clamoured for more vigorous measures against the Russians.  Never did news come more opportunely for Napoleon than this, which reached him at Tilsit on, or before, June the 24th.  He is said to have exclaimed to the Czar with a flash of dramatic fatalism:  “It is a decree of Providence which tells me that the Turkish Empire can no longer exist."[146]

Certain it is that the most potent spell exerted by the great conqueror over his rival was a guarded invitation to share in some future partition of the Turkish Empire.  That scheme had fascinated Napoleon ever since the year 1797, when he gazed on the Adriatic.  Though laid aside for a time in 1806, when he roused the Turks against Russia, it was never lost sight of; and now, on the basis of a common hatred of England and a common desire to secure the spoils of the Ottoman Power, the stately fabric of the Franco-Russian alliance was reared.