But Milord Hawkesbury
was the Foreign Minister, and it was with him that we were obliged to do
our bargaining.
"You can understand that it was no child's play. After ten years of war
each nation had got hold of a great deal which had belonged to the
other, or to the other's allies. What was to be given back, and what
was to be kept? Is this island worth that peninsula? If we do this at
Venice, will you do that at Sierra Leone? If we give up Egypt to the
Sultan, will you restore the Cape of Good Hope, which you have taken
from our allies the Dutch? So we wrangled and wrestled, and I have seen
Monsieur Otto come back to the Embassy so exhausted that his secretary
and I had to help him from his carriage to his sofa. But at last things
adjusted themselves, and the night came round when the treaty was to be
finally signed. Now, you must know that the one great card which we
held, and which we played, played, played at every point of the game,
was that we had Egypt. The English were very nervous about our being
there. It gave us a foot at each end of the Mediterranean, you see.
And they were not sure that that wonderful little Napoleon of ours might
not make it the base of an advance against India. So whenever Lord
Hawkesbury proposed to retain anything, we had only to reply, 'In _that_
case, of course, we cannot consent to evacuate Egypt,' and in this way
we quickly brought him to reason.
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