“You say that I am required to withdraw beyond the Niemen before opening negotiations; but two months ago I was required in the same way to withdraw beyond the Oder and the Vistula, and in spite of that you agree to enter into negotiations.”
He strode in silence from one corner of the room to the other and stopped again, facing Balashov. Balashov noticed that his left leg was twitching more rapidly than ever, and his face looked as though petrified in its stern expression. Napoleon was aware of this twitching. “The vibration of my left calf is a great sign with me,” he said in later days.
“Such demands as to retire beyond the Oder and the Vistula may be made to a prince of Baden, but not to me,” Napoleon almost screamed, quite to his own surprise. “If you were to give me Petersburg and Moscow I wouldn’t accept such conditions. You say： I began the war. But who was the first to join his army？ The Emperor Alexander, and not I. And you offer me negotiations when I have spent millions, when you are in alliance with England, and when your position is weak—you offer me negotiations！ What is the object of your alliance with England？ What has it given you？” he asked hurriedly. The motive of his words was obviously now not to enlarge on the benefits of peace and to consider its possibility, but simply to prove his own rectitude, and his own power, and point out the duplicity and the errors of Alexander.
He had plainly intended in entering on this conversation to point out the advantages of his own position, and to signify that in spite of them he would entertain the proposal of negotiations. But he had begun talking, and the more he talked the less able was he to control the tenor of his words.
The whole gist of his words now was obviously to glorify himself and to insult Alexander, precisely what he had least intended doing at the beginning of the interview.
“I am told you have concluded a peace with the Turks？”
Balashov bent his head affirmatively. “Peace has been concluded…” he began. But Napoleon did not allow him to speak. He clearly did not wish any one to speak but himself, and he went on with the unrestrained volubility and irritability to which people spoilt by success are so prone. “Yes, I know you have made peace with the Turks without gaining Moldavia and Wallachia. I would have given your Emperor those provinces just as I gave him Finland. Yes,” he went on, “I promised, and would have given the Emperor Alexander Moldavia and Wallachia, but now he will not possess those fair provinces. He might have united them to his empire, however, and he would have enlarged the frontiers of Russia from the Gulf of Bothnia to the mouth of the Danube. Catherine the Great could have done no more,” Napoleon declared, growing hotter and hotter as he walked up and down the room, and repeated to Balashov almost the words he had used to Alexander himself at Tilsit. “All that he would have owed to my friendship. Ah, what a fine reign！ what a fine reign might have been that of the Emperor Alexander. Oh, what a grand reign,” he repeated several times. He stopped, took a gold snuffbox out of his pocket, and greedily put it to his nose.
He turned a commiserating glance on Balashov, and as soon as he would have made some observation, he hurriedly interrupted him again.