In a letter dated December 19, 1811, he writes:
"Since the date of my last I have had many interviews with the Minister of Foreign Relations. I have explained several points, and urged every argument for as speedy an answer to my note of the 10th as its very serious importance would allow. He always treats the subject with apparent candor and solicitude, seems anxious to gain information, and declares that neither he nor the emperor had before understood American affairs, and always assures me that he is nearly ready with his answer. But he says the emperor's taking so long a time to consider it and make up his decision is not without reason, for it opens a wide field for meditation on very interesting matters. He says the emperor has read the note repeatedly and with great attention—that he told him the reasoning in it was everywhere just and the conclusions undeniable, but to reconcile its principles with his continental system presented difficulties not easy to remove. From what the emperor told me himself at the last diplomatic audience, and from a variety of hints and other circumstances remarked among the people about his person, I have been made to believe that he is really changing his system relative to our trade, and that the answer to my note will be more satisfactory than I had at first expected."
Several other letters from the poet to Monroe follow, all of the same general tenor—complaining of delay, yet hopeful that the treaty would shortly be secured. February 8, 1812, he writes to the Secretary of State that the duke is "at work upon the treaty, and probably in good earnest, but the discussions with Russia and the other affairs of this Continent give him and the emperor so much occupation that I cannot count upon their getting on very fast with ours."
Amid these delays the summer passed away, and the emperor, intent on mapping out his great campaign against Russia, still neglected to sign the important instrument. Early in the summer Napoleon left Paris for Wilna to take command of the vast armies that had been collected for the invasion, and from that place, on the 11th of October, the duke de Bassano addressed the following note to Mr. Barlow in Paris:
"Sir: I have had the honor to make known to you how much I regretted, in the negotiation commenced between the United States and France, the delays which inevitably attended a correspondence carried on at so great a distance. Your government has desired to see the epoch of this arrangement draw near: His Majesty is animated by the same dispositions, and, willing to assure to the negotiation a result the most prompt, he has thought that it would be expedient to suppress the intermediaries and to transfer the conference to Wilna. His Majesty has in consequence authorized me, sir, to treat directly with you; and if you will come to this town I dare hope that, with the desire which animates us both to conciliate such important interests, we shall immediately be enabled to remove all the difficulties which until now have appeared to impede the progress of the negotiation. I have apprised the duke of Dalberg that his mission was thus terminated, and I have laid before His Majesty the actual state of the negotiation, to the end that when you arrive at Wilna, the different questions being already illustrated either by your judicious observation or by the instructions I shall have received, we may, sir, conclude an arrangement so desirable and so conformable to the mutually amicable views of our two governments."
Barlow could do no less than comply with this invitation, since, as he remarked in a letter to Monroe under date of October 25, "it was impossible to refuse it without giving offence." His letter accepting the duke's invitation was probably the last ever written by him, and is dated Paris, October 25, 1812:
"Sir: In consequence of the letter you did me the honor to write me on the 11th of this month, I accept your invitation, and leave Paris to-morrow for Wilna, where I hope to arrive in fifteen or eighteen days from this date. The negotiation on which you have done me the honor to invite me at Wilna is so completely prepared in all its parts between the duke of Dalberg and myself, and, as I understand, sent on to you for your approbation about the 18th of the present month, that I am persuaded that if it could have arrived before the date of your letter the necessity of this meeting would not have existed, as I am confident His Majesty would have found the project reasonable and acceptable in all its parts, and would have ordered that minister to conclude and sign both the treaty of commerce and the convention of indemnities."
Barlow left Paris for Wilna on the 26th of October in his private carriage, yet travelling night and day and with relays of horses at the post-towns to expedite his progress. His sole companion was his nephew and secretary of legation, Thomas Barlow, who had been educated and given an honorable position in life through the poet's munificence. Their route, the same as that pursued by Napoleon a few weeks before, led across the Belgian frontiers and through the forests and defiles of the German principalities. Once across the Niemen, they met with rumors of the emperor's disaster at Moscow, and that portions of his army were then in full retreat, but, discrediting them, pushed on to Wilna, which they reached about the 1st of December. Wilna is the only considerable village in Russia between the Niemen and Moscow: it is a quaint and venerable town, capital of the ancient province of Lithuania, and played an important part in Napoleon's Russian campaign, being the rendezvous of his legions after crossing the Niemen and the site of his army-hospitals. When our travellers entered it, it was filled with a horde of panic-stricken fugitives, who made the town a temporary resting-place before continuing their flight to the frontiers; nor were they long in learning the, to them, distressing news that the French army was in swift retreat, and that the duke de Bassano, so far from being at leisure to attend a diplomatic conference at Wilna, was then on the frontiers hurrying forward reinforcements to cover the retreat of his emperor across the Beresina.
The perilous journey had been made in vain, and the treaty was doomed to still further delay. It now only remained for Barlow to extricate himself from his dangerous position and to reach the frontiers before the fleeing army and the pursuing Cossacks should close every avenue of escape.
Thomas Barlow on his return to America sometimes favored his friends with vivid pictures of the sufferings and privations endured by the travellers in their flight from Wilna. The passage of so many men had rendered the roads well-nigh impassable; food, even of the meanest kind, could only be procured with the greatest difficulty; and often the travellers were mixed up with the flying masses, as it seemed inextricably. Ruined habitations, wagons and provision-vans overturned and pillaged, men dying by scores from hunger and starvation, and frozen corpses of men and horses, were objects that constantly presented themselves. At length they crossed the Niemen and pursued their journey through Poland, still suffering terribly from the cold and from the insufficient nature of the food obtainable; but on reaching Zarrow,[C] an obscure village near Cracow, the poet was seized with a sudden and fatal attack of pneumonia, the result, no doubt, of privation and exposure. He was borne to a little Jewish cottage, the only inn that the village afforded, and there died December 26, 1812. His remains were interred in the little churchyard of the village where he died. It is rarely that an American visits his grave, and the government has never taken interest enough in its minister to erect a memorial slab above his dust; but wifely devotion has supplied the omission, and a plain monument of marble, on which are inscribed his name, age and station and the circumstances of his death, marks the poet's place of sepulture.