In the long and complete negotiations that followed the peace Talleyrand was very active. His detractors had the alternative of ignoring his action altogether, and reducing him to the inglorious rank of first clerk of the Foreign Office, or of assigning to him a very considerable activity with a proportionate “corruption.” The truth is that during 1802-3 Talleyrand was very busy, and his work was lucrative. Once more, however, there is no charge that he sold the interest of France or of peace. In those last days of the buccaneering period the great Powers regarded helpless little States as a providential means of compensating each other. Poland had been coldly dismembered. Turkey in Europe was freely subjected to plans, as it still is. Holland, Hanover, and a score of other places were pawns on the board. It was understood that after the peace the possesssions of the ecclesiastical princes on the Rhine should be put on the market. The hotel of the Foreign Minister at Paris was besieged with princes and their envoys. Baron von Gagern tells how he saw Luchesini, Cobentzl, and others playing with Talleyrand’s adopted daughter, Charlotte, and her lap-dog. Prussia was the first to be rewarded for her benevolent neutrality and her silence in view of the invasion of Italy. Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Hesse, Baden, and the House of Orange were indemnified out of ecclesiastical property. Vienna saw its legendary “empire” break up without the power of murmuring. Austria itself and the Grand Duke of Tuscany absorbed more of the ecclesiastical domains. The cession of the left bank of the Rhine to France had created the need for indemnities. France, with the ready consent of Europe, covered her aggression by dividing the right bank among the dispossessed princes and the Powers. At the Hotel Galiffet and at St. Cloud the map of Europe was assiduously used. Little squares of territory with few guns and troops changed colour rapidly. There were believed to be men and women in them.