a usurped throne by violence and crime. His insatiable ambition would
subject all Europe to his rule. But the time is come for avenging the
rights of nations . . . ." M. Forshmann again referred to his orders,
and with some degree of violence insisted on the insertion of the article
in its complete form. The Burgomaster then authorised the editor of the
Correspondent to print the article that night, and M. Forshmann, having
obtained that authority, carried the article to the office at half-past
eleven o'clock.

Such was the account given me by M. Doormann. I observed that I did not
understand how the imaginary apprehension of any violence on the part of
Russia should have induced him to admit so insolent an attack upon the
most powerful sovereign in Europe, whose arms would soon dictate laws to
Germany. The Syndic did not dissemble his fear of the Emperor's
resentment, while at the same time he expressed a hope that the Emperor
would take into consideration the extreme difficulty of a small power
maintaining neutrality in the extraordinary circumstances in which
Hamburg was placed, and that the articles might be said to have been
presented almost at the point of the Cossacks' spears. M. Doormann added
that a refusal, which world have brought Russian troops to Hamburg, might
have been attended by very unpleasant consequences to me, and might have
committed the Senate in a very different way. I begged of him, once for
all, to set aside in these affairs all consideration of my personal
danger: and the Syndic, after a conversation of more than two hours,
departed more uneasy in his mind than when he arrived, and conjuring me
to give a faithful report of the facts as they had happened.

M. Doormann was a very worthy man, and I gave a favourable representation
of his excuses and of the readiness which he had always evinced to keep
out of the Correspondent articles hostile to France; as, for example, the