“The French!” said the Admiral: “they are robbers and murderers—a band of thieves; and wars should cease, and all the world should join in endeavouring to extirpate from off the face of the earth this race of murderers, oppressors, and unbelievers. Divine Providence never will permit these infidels to God to go unpunished.”
“They have had thirty thousand pounds’ worth of palaces and villas and goods of mine,” observed My Lady philosophically, and also perhaps to divert the Admiral’s thoughts into a new channel. “But what of the rest of the world, from which you seem to have been hearing to-day?”
“Bad—bad—bad!” he said, with his intense eye fixed on some trifling object in his state-room, of whose very outline he would be unconscious. “Worst of all, perhaps, the Emperor and these kingdoms,—though I cannot get England to do what she might do. Ministers at home will not see the importance of things here. They will not see the importance of sending money; and it is as impossible to squeeze money out of Sicily as it is to grow corn upon a rock. Without money their Majesties cannot move, and with money they would do nothing.”
“Oh, Nelson—the Queen!” said My Lady.
“Her Majesty,” said the Admiral, “is a great king; she is beautiful, she is adorable, she is royal-hearted. If it were only Her Majesty, we should never have been where we are now; but the King will act with Acton, or Acton with the King, I don’t know which, and the d—d one of them will try and hunt with the hounds and run with the hare, while the French are in the very act of hanging him. What did they do at Leghorn?—treated me as the master of a merchantman whose business it was to transport the brave Neapolitan troops, and whose business was then to kick up my heels till the brave Neapolitan general had made up his mind to run away again! The bonds of neutrality were to be drawn tight round the English, who could and would save Naples, and to be stretched in every direction the French, who meant to swallow up Naples as soon as they were ready, should choose; the King or Acton thinking that, by burying its head in the sand, the ostrich would escape being kicked.”
“But, Nelson,” said My Lady, “in common fairness to the King, you must remember that neutrality with the French had to be observed; and the Emperor was most particular upon the point, that there must be nothing in the nature of operations against them, except at Malta, where they had dispossessed His Majesty of part of his dominions.”
“The Emperor,” said the Admiral, with withering contempt: “was there ever such a fool in a Paradise? How is it that none of Her Majesty’s wisdom and courage has descended to her brother’s son? While he is playing with his precious scruples Naples will go, and the Great Duchy will go, and all the Emperor’s fine new Italian dominions will go; and the day will come, mark my words, Emma, when Buonaparte—should he ever get back from Egypt—will enter Vienna in triumph and trample on him in his own palace!”
“He is waiting for the Concert.”
“The Concert, forsooth!—there is no Concert, except the Concert of the French themselves to take all Europe. While the others are waiting for each other, the policy of these robbers is to take the small States, which cannot resist without the aid of the larger, and every one of them will supply its quota of armies and resources to be used against the larger, one by one, until they are all swallowed by the Beast with the Ten Horns. Cannot the Emperor see that the very life of his empire depends on his marching the best army he can put in the field to Italy, and clearing out the French? And as for the King and his blessed neutrality—why, his neutrality was only an alliance against England which prevented us destroying the whole of the privateers in North Italy at one sweep; for they all lay in the Mole at Leghorn, besides the corn-ships which were waiting to carry the French supplies, without which they could not maintain themselves a month in Italy. And yet we could not touch one of them, because the King was not at war with the French—the King who at that moment was marching at the head of his army against the French, in Rome, and who had already captured from them the Island fortress of Gozo!”
“Surely you see what a difficult position he is placed in——”