“Then we have remained entirely faithful to our agreement,” said Bonaparte. “We have not made any alterations whatever in the programme which we agreed upon and deposed in writing at the castle of Campo Formio. It only remains for us to-day to sign these secret articles.”
He took the pen and hastily signed the two documents spread out on the table.
Count Cobenzl signed them also; but his hand was trembling a little while he was writing, and his face was clouded and gloomy. Perhaps he could not help feeling that Austria just now was signing the misery and disgrace of Germany in order to purchase thereby some provinces, and that Austria enlarged her territory at the expense of the empire whose emperor was her own ruler—Francis II. Their business being finished, the two plenipotentiaries rose, and Count Cobenzl withdrew. Bonaparte accompanied him again to the door of the anteroom, and then returned to his cabinet.
A proud, triumphant smile was now playing on his pale, narrow lips, and his eyes were beaming and flashing in an almost sinister manner. Stepping back to the table, he fixed his eyes upon the document with the two signatures.
“The left bank of the Rhine is ours!” he said, heavily laying his hand upon the paper. “But the right bank?”
He shook his head, and folding his arms upon his back, he commenced pacing the room, absorbed in profound reflections. His features had now resumed their marble tranquillity; it was again the apparation of Julius Caesar that was walking up and down there with inaudible steps, and the old thoughts of Julius Caesar, those thoughts for which he had to suffer death, seemed to revive again in Bonaparte’s mind, for at one time he whispered, “A crown for me! A crown in Germany. It would be too small for me! If my hand is to grasp a crown, it must—”
He paused and gazed fixedly at the wall as if he saw the future there, that arose before him in a strange phantasmagoria.
After a long pause, he started and seemed to awake from a dream.
“I believe I will read the letter once more, which I received yesterday by mail,” he murmured, in an almost inaudible tone. “It is a wonderful letter, and I really would like to know who wrote it.”
He drew a folded paper from his bosom and opened it. Stepping into a bay window, he perused the letter with slow, deliberate glances. The bright daylight illuminated his profile and rendered its antique beauty even more conspicuous. Profound silence surrounded him, and nothing was heard hut his soft and slow respiration and the rustling of the paper.