his artifices are disconcerted, as evil spirits are conjured by the
sign of the cross.

The armistice which was the result of the battle of Marengo, the
conditions of which included the cession of all the strong places in
the North of Italy, was most disadvantageous to Austria. Bonaparte
could not have gained more by a succession of victories. But it
might be said that the continental powers appeared to consider it
honorable to give up what would have been worth still more if they
had allowed them to be taken. They made haste to sanction the
injustice of Napoleon, and to legitimate his conquests, while they
ought, if they could not conquer, at least not to have seconded him.
This certainly was not asking too much of the old cabinets of
Europe; but they knew not how to conduct themselves in so novel a
situation, and Bonaparte confounded them so much by the union of
promises and threats, that in giving up, they believed they were
gaining, and rejoiced at the word peace, as much as if this word
had preserved its old signification. The illuminations, the
reverences, the dinners, and firing of cannon to celebrate this
peace, were exactly the same as formerly: but far from cicatrizing
the wounds, it introduced into the government which signed it a most
certain and effectual principle of dissolution.

The most remarkable circumstance in the fortune of Napoleon is the
sovereigns whom he found upon the throne. Paul I. particularly did
him incalculable service; he had the same enthusiasm for him that
his father had felt for Frederic the Second, and he abandoned
Austria at the moment when she was still attempting to struggle.
Bonaparte persuaded him that the whole of Europe would be pacified
for centuries, if the two great empires of the East and West were