Everything had been thought of to draw Elizabeth into this intrigue. Tercier had entrusted to d’Eon a quarto volume of _L’Esprit des Lois_, in the binding of which, between two pieces of cardboard, enclosed and bound up in the same calfskin, were concealed private letters from the King to the Empress, as well as several cyphers. One was for d’Eon’s correspondence with the King and Tercier, another for d’Eon’s use in communicating with the Prince de Conti and M. Monin, and a third designed to enable Elizabeth or her confidant, Woronzow, to correspond at any time with Louis XV. through the medium of Tercier, without the ministers and ambassadors becoming aware of it. Elizabeth, who did not share the King’s fondness for dissimulation, and never concealed even her wildest caprices, proved insensible to the attraction of this mysterious correspondence. She declined the cypher, but received d’Eon, and consented to listen to the King’s and the Prince de Conti’s overtures. She showed, however, no inclination to marry the Prince, and even avoided pledging herself in regard to Poland. All she promised was to appoint Conti Commander-in-Chief of the Russian troops, with the title of Duke of Courland, provided the King granted his cousin permission to accept her offer and to proceed to St. Petersburg. And there, on another account, the matter stopped, for while d’Eon was negotiating for him in Russia the Prince was ruining his prospects at Versailles. By incurring the displeasure of the Marquise de Pompadour, whom he had believed himself strong enough to set at defiance and to ridicule almost openly, he lost favour with the King, who ceased to place the secret diplomacy at the disposal of his ambitious cousin. D’Eon received instructions to protract the negotiation and to correspond in future only with Tercier and the Comte de Broglie, who succeeded the Prince de Conti as secret minister in the middle of the year 1757. If the private parleys met with only partial success, which was soon made altogether useless by Conti’s disgrace, the result of the official mission was more satisfactory. Thanks to the patient and persistent efforts of Douglas and d’Eon, the treaty concluded some months before between Bestuchef and Sir Hanbury Williams was annulled. Russia remitted to England the subsidies she had already received, but recalled her troops; it was decided that the eighty thousand men, who were already assembled in Livonia and Courland for the service of England and Prussia should change sides and unite with the armies of Louis XV. and Maria Theresa. At the same time it was resolved that, in order to indicate more clearly the character of the relations about to be established between France and Russia, there should be an interchange of ambassadors of high rank between the two courts. The choice of France fell on the Marquis de L’Hospital, and that of Russia on Count Bestuchef, the Chancellor’s brother.