Page:The Marquess Cornwallis and the Consolidation of British Rule.djvu/178

172 a conqueror: but the good order and tranquillity which the country now enjoyed made us respect him as a statesman and a legislator,, and had removed our apprehensions of having connection and intercourse with France.' There were fireworks and illuminations in the evening. The crowd of spectators was orderly. Nothing but expressions of civility were heard as Cornwallis drove through the streets, and when he went to the opera a few nights afterwards he was 'greeted with loud and general acclamations.'

Lord Cornwallis, from his early travels on the Continent, must have acquired a very fair command of the French language, and at one time he evidently expected to have several additional interviews with the First Consul. But for some reason this plan was not fully carried out, and the English Plenipotentiary was referred for the whole discussion to Joseph Bonaparte, who had the character of a 'well-meaning although not a very able man.' The two diplomatists began their conference at Paris but soon shifted their ground to Amiens. Before leaving the French capital Cornwallis had one more conference with Bonaparte without the presence of a third person. It lasted half-an-hour. Bonaparte's views and wishes are given by Cornwallis in another letter to Lord Hawkesbury as follows: —

'He began the conversation by assurances of his earnest desire for peace, and avowed that it was much