Such was the account given me by M. Doormann.  I observed that I did not understand how the imaginary apprehension of any violence on the part of Russia should have induced him to admit so insolent an attack upon the most powerful sovereign in Europe, whose arms would soon dictate laws to Germany.  The Syndic did not dissemble his fear of the Emperor’s resentment, while at the same time he expressed a hope that the Emperor would take into consideration the extreme difficulty of a small power maintaining neutrality in the extraordinary circumstances in which Hamburg was placed, and that the articles might be said to have been presented almost at the point of the Cossacks’ spears.  M. Doormann added that a refusal, which world have brought Russian troops to Hamburg, might have been attended by very unpleasant consequences to me, and might have committed the Senate in a very different way.  I begged of him, once for all, to set aside in these affairs all consideration of my personal danger:  and the Syndic, after a conversation of more than two hours, departed more uneasy in his mind than when he arrived, and conjuring me to give a faithful report of the facts as they had happened.

M. Doormann was a very worthy man, and I gave a favourable representation of his excuses and of the readiness which he had always evinced to keep out of the Correspondent articles hostile to France; as, for example, the commencement of a proclamation of the Emperor of Germany to his subjects, and a complete proclamation of the King of Sweden.  As it happened, the good Syndic escaped with nothing worse than a fright; I was myself astonished at the success of my intercession.  I learned from the Minister for Foreign Affairs that the Emperor was furiously indignant on reading the article, in which the French army was outraged as well as he.  Indeed, he paid but little attention to insults directed against himself personally.  Their eternal repetition had inured him to them; but at the idea of his army being insulted he was violently enraged, and uttered the most terrible threats.

It is worthy of remark that the Swedish and English Ministers, as soon as they read the article, waited upon the editor of the Correspondent, and expressed their astonishment that such a libel should have been published.  “Victorious armies,” said they, “should be answered by cannonballs and not by insults as gross as they are ridiculous.”  This opinion was shared by all the foreigners at that time in Hamburg.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

1805

Difficulties of my situation at Hamburg—­Toil and responsibility—­ Supervision of the emigrants—­Foreign Ministers—­Journals—­Packet from Strasburg—­Bonaparte fond of narrating Giulio, an extempore recitation of a story composed by the Emperor.

The brief detail I have given in the two or three preceding chapters of the events which occurred previously