years' experience as a statesman. This would indicate careful and
painstaking work on the part of somebody; how, then, do we
reconcile this with such clumsy mistakes, recognizable as such by
any schoolboy, as signing the name of Baron Stein as Prussian
Chancellor, or Mr. George Canning, who is a member of the
opposition party and not connected with your government, as
British Foreign secretary.

[Illustration: 25 NOVEMBER 1808]

These are mistakes which only a madman would make. There are those
who think our prisoner is mad, because of his apparent delusions
about the great conqueror, General Bonaparte, alias the Emperor
Napoleon. Madmen have been known to fabricate evidence to support
their delusions, it is true, but I shudder to think of a madman
having at his disposal the resources to manufacture the papers you
will find in this dispatch case. Moreover, some of our foremost
medical men, who have specialized in the disorders of the mind,
have interviewed this man Bathurst and say that, save for his
fixed belief in a nonexistent situation, he is perfectly sane.

Personally, I believe that the whole thing is a gigantic hoax,
perpetrated for some hidden and sinister purpose, possibly to
create confusion, and to undermine the confidence existing
between your government and mine, and to set against one another
various persons connected with both governments, or else as a
mask for some other conspiratorial activity. Only a few months
ago, you will recall, there was a Jacobin plot unmasked at Köln.

But, whatever this business may portend, I do not like it. I