Ere hostilities were renewed, Buonaparte employed M. Meyer, president of the regency of Warsaw, to open a negotiation with the head of the House of Bourbon, then resident in Poland.  He proposed that Louis should execute a formal deed resigning for himself and his family all pretensions to the throne of France, and offered in return to put the Bourbon princes in possession of independent dominions in Italy.  The heir of the French kings answered in language worthy of his birth:  “I do not confound Monsieur Buonaparte,” said he, “with those who have preceded him.  I esteem his bravery and military genius, and I owe him goodwill for many of the acts of his government—­for benefits done to my people I will always consider as done to me.  But he is mistaken if he supposes that my rights can ever be made the subject of bargain and compromise.  Could they have been called in question, this very application would have established them.  What the designs of God may be for me and my house I know not; but of the duties imposed on me by the rank in which it was His pleasure I should be born, I am not wholly ignorant.  As a Christian, I will perform those duties while life remains.  As a descendant of St. Louis, I will know how to respect myself, were I in fetters.  As the successor of Francis the First, I will, at least, say with him—­’all is lost except honour.’”

Such is the account of the Bourbon princes.  Buonaparte utterly denied having given any authority for such a negotiation; and added, that in doing so he should have played the part of a madman, since any application to Louis must have been an admission that his own authority in France was imperfect in title.  It is obvious that the Consul would have acted most imprudently in avowing such an attempt—­after it had proved unsuccessful; but the veracity of the exiled king lies under no suspicion; nor is it easy to believe that Meyer would have dared to open such a negotiation without sufficient authority from Napoleon.  Hitherto he had betrayed no symptom of personal malevolence towards the House of Bourbon—­but henceforth the autocrat, insulted as he thought in the style of “Monsieur Buonaparte,” appears to have meditated some signal act of revenge.

He resented the refusal of Louis the more because he doubted not that that prince well understood how little the great powers of Europe were disposed to regard, with favourable eyes, the establishment of the Buonapartes as a new dynasty in France.  He suspected, in a word, that his recent disputes with the cabinet of St. James’s, had inspired new hopes into the breasts of the exile family.