The die was cast. What is to be said of the gamester who staked--and lost--his all on the throw? If moral considerations may for the moment be put on one side, honesty and good faith laid on the shelf, no one can doubt that Louis was right. The interests of his country and the interests of his family demanded at that particular juncture of affairs the acceptance of the will. The difficulties attending the enforcement of the Partition Treaty, in spite of the favour with which the powers of Europe had received it were enormous. To impose the archduke Charles upon Spain by French bayonets, while all Spain and half France was loudly demanding the duke of Anjou was an impossibility. To permit the archduke to establish himself in Spain by means of Austrian troops, before he and his father had accepted the treaty, was too dangerous to be thought of. To act upon the secret article, declare the rights of the archduke forfeited, and give Spain and the Indies to some third person, was to commit a greater outrage than ever upon the pride of Spain and the claims of the Emperor, and to ensure the outbreak of war. The determination of the Emperor to resist a treaty which gave him the lion’s share of the spoil made it impossible to enforce it in its entirety when Charles II. was dead. The contracting powers might, it is true, have executed it as far as was possible. They might have effected the conquest of Naples and Sicily for the Dauphin, and handed over the Milanese to the duke of Lorraine. They might have administered Spain and the Netherlands until a decision was eventually arrived at. But to do these things they would have incurred as large an expenditure of both men and money as would have been entailed by open war, and they would not have avoided open war with the Emperor. To execute the treaty in its entirety was impossible, to execute it partially was costly and dangerous. [Sidenote: =Remoteness of the dangers of war.=]