Fox had returned to office in England, and had opened communications by sending information to Paris of a plot (often thought to be a diplomatic one) against the Emperor’s life. Talleyrand eagerly followed up the opening, and expressed willingness to treat with England by means of Lord Yarmouth, who had been detained as a prisoner at Verdun. Yarmouth went to London with an assurance that France was not hopelessly fixed as regards Hanover, and returned full of hope on June 16th. But Napoleon’s vulpine diplomacy was again overruling Talleyrand. He had forced him to promise Prussia secretly that France would not sacrifice Hanover, and to open separate negotiations with Russia. The only difficulties that Napoleon recognised, Talleyrand says, were those that force cannot overcome. His minister had now to conduct a most complex and mendacious communication with the three Powers, though it might be pleaded in extenuation that the Powers were also endeavouring to outwit each other. The policy of England was comparatively straight—so straight, in fact, that it was her minister who innocently betrayed Napoleon’s duplicity. But while England refused to negotiate a peace independently of Russia, that Power was endeavouring to make a separate treaty with France, and deceiving England as to her unfriendly designs on Turkey; while she was at the same time concluding a secret agreement against France with Prussia. The latter Power, secretly signing the treaty against France on July 1st with Russia, was receiving from Napoleon the reassurance of Hanover (already promised by France to England) and entertaining proposals from him for her aggrandisement in Germany. France was simultaneously offering Hanover to England and Prussia, was secretly creating a great German confederation and denying to England and Prussia that she contemplated any changes in Germany, was playing with England until she could secure the separate alliance with Russia, and was secretly raising opposition to the latter Power in Turkey. And amidst this maze of negotiations and intrigue Talleyrand was coolly creating the Rhine Confederation and dealing with the huge crowd of German delegates who besieged the Hotel Galiffet with further demands for plunder or redress.