Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 1.djvu/439

426 but a most troublesome enemy; always in difficulties, but in spite of fantastic outbursts always respectable,—Yrujo needed only the contrast of characters such as those of Pickering or Madison to make him the most entertaining figure in Washington politics. He had become an American in language, family, and political training. He loved the rough-and-tumble of democratic habits, and remembered his diplomatic dignity only when he could use it as a weapon against a secretary of state. If he thought the Government to need assistance or warning, he wrote communications to the newspapers in a style which long experience had made familiar to the public and irritating to the Government whose acts he criticized. For natural reasons the American Executive, which never hesitated to use the press without limit for its own purposes, held it indecorous that a foreign minister should attempt to affect public opinion. The example of Genet was regarded as a proof even more than a warning that such action was highly improper; but from Yrujo's point of view, as from Genet's, the question of decorum was ridiculous in a country which prided itself on the absence of etiquette, and the only question he cared to consider was whether the press answered his purpose. His success could be best measured by the exasperation it caused to the tempers of Pickering and Madison.

Yrujo felt no love for Bonaparte, and no wish to serve his ends. At this moment of anxiety, stepping forward to assist the President, he asserted that there