minister had supplied information about the ships, Napoleon tried
at first muzzling the press. But as late as February, 1864, he
was still carrying water on both shoulders. His Minister of
Marine notified the builders that they must get the ships out of
France, unarmed, under fictitious sale to some neutral country.
The next month, reports which the Confederate commissioners sent
home became distinctly alarming. Mann wrote from Brussels:
"Napoleon has enjoined upon Maximilian to hold no official
relations with our commissioners in Mexico." Shortly after this
Slidell received a shock that was the beginning of the end:
Maximilian, on passing through Paris on his way to Mexico,
refused to receive him.

The Mexican project was now being condemned by all classes in
France. Nevertheless, the Government was trying to float a
Mexican loan, and it is hardly fanciful to think that on this
loan the last hope of the Confederacy turned. Despite the popular
attitude toward Mexico, the loan was going well when the House of
Representatives of the United States dealt the Confederacy a
staggering blow. It passed unanimous resolutions in the most grim
terms, denouncing the substitution of monarchical for republican
government in Mexico under European auspices. When this action
was reported in France, the Mexican loan collapsed.

Napoleon's Italian policy was now moving rapidly toward the
crisis which it reached during the following summer when he
surrendered to the opposition and promised to withdraw the French
troops from Rome. In May, when the loan collapsed, there was
nothing for it but to throw over his dear friends of the
Confederacy. Presently he had summoned Arman before him, "rated