‘... I offer no reply to your reproaches nor to your misplaced invectives. I consider them to be the effects of bad humour on the part of the cleverest and most agreeable ape I have ever met in my life.... I have already had the honour to inform you, that so long as Art. IV. of our Covenant, which distinctly states that you are to supply me with larger sums for the liquidation of my debts, is not executed, I do not feel bound to observe any of the terms in the transaction. You are the contracting power, I am the executrix; it is therefore for you to act and for me to execute.... Your reproaches on the incomplete delivery of papers are badly founded; in the first place, because neither you, nor any ministers—past, present, or future—nor the Prince de Conti, not even the Count de Broglio, can be aware of all that passed in 1755 and 1756, of a secret nature, between the late King, the Empress Elizabeth and the Grand Chancellor of Russia, Count Woronzoff. M. Tercier, the Chevalier Douglas and I were alone engaged in this important secret negotiation, of which M. Rouillé, at that time Minister for Foreign Affairs, had not the slightest cognisance. It was only in 1757 that the Count de Broglio was partly admitted into the secret, and that he, by order of the King, associated me in his own secret correspondence.... I have not deceived you, because with twenty letters I have warned the Count de Broglio, the minister at Versailles and you as well, that so long as the sum to which I lay legitimate claim is not paid, I shall never make a complete surrender of my papers.... When you will have aged and become grey by long service in the army and diplomacy, you will have learnt that where a third-class power treats for peace with a first-class power, the third-class power always secures the guarantee of two second-class powers for the observance of the conditions.... Now, since I consider my power to be the weakest, and least important on earth, as compared to that with which I have the honour to treat, and that I am unable to secure the guarantee of any power, great or small, I entrust myself to my own prudence and experience. Consult all good diplomatists at Versailles or elsewhere in Europe, to find out whether I am in the wrong and as silly as you take me to be.... Should his Majesty and his ministers persist in the consummation of our Covenant, I will fulfil my part from a sense of obedience, but you are equally bound to concede to me my just demands....[316] ‘LE CHEVALIER ET CHEVALIÈRE D’EON.’