When the negotiations began to arrange peace, Napoleon treated the two
distinguished officers, Prince John of Lichtenstein and General von
Bubna, with the utmost courtesy. He spared no pains to show his personal
esteem and to flatter their national pride; he spoke in the highest
terms of the Austrian army and of the bravery it had displayed in the
last campaign. He said to them: "You will always remain the first
continental power, after France; you are deucedly strong. Allied as
I was with Russia, I never expected to have on my hands a serious
continental war, and what a war!" Then to console them for the
conditions imposed on mutilated Austria, he added: "Why distress
yourselves about a few scraps of territory which must come back to you
some day? All this can only last during my lifetime. France ought never
to fight beyond the Rhine. I have been able to; but when I'm gone, it's
all over." Perhaps he was thinking of marrying Marie Louise; at any
rate, he showed a consideration for Prince John of Lichtenstein
and General Bubna which amazed all who saw it. M. de Bausset, who
accompanied him as a gentleman-in-waiting, says in his Memoirs: "I
watched attentively the two Austrian commissioners while they were
breakfasting with the Emperor: I tried to read their expressions, and
I fancied that I saw harmony and a good understanding growing day by
day.... Napoleon's politeness and graciousness towards these gentlemen
never relaxed for a moment. He seemed anxious to give them a favorable
idea of his manners and his person." Nevertheless there were many
patriotic men and women in Austria who were inconsolable. Princess
Charles of Schwarzenberg--the wife of the brilliant general who had
just fought like a hero, and, in the next year, as Austrian ambassador
at the court of the Tuileries Avas to negotiate the marriage of Napoleon
and Marie Louise--wrote a most despairing letter to her husband, in
which she said: "I shall bury myself in the past in order to escape
the present and the future. I have heard that you were to be chosen to