The conduct of the secretary of Embassy during progress of the negotiations was all that his superiors could desire, and he earned the gratitude of many a French prisoner by his exertions in administering to their comfort. Scarcely a letter left the ambassador that was not replete with the highest encomiums. _The Duke de Nivernois to the Duke de Praslin._ ‘D’Eon is at work as usual from morning to night. I cannot sufficiently extol his zeal, vigilance, amiability of disposition, and activity.... When the state of my health will force me to quit this country, in the spring, I will, with your permission, leave our little D’Eon until my successor is appointed, and I promise that he will do well and be favourably received. He is very active, very discreet, never exhibiting curiosity or officiousness; never giving cause for mistrust or acting defiantly, _quod est inveniendum_, because here the majority of men are like the most unmanageable of horses....’[84] On February 10, 1763, Mr. Richard Neville Neville left Paris for London with the Treaty of Peace signed that same evening by the plenipotentiaries of Great Britain, France, and Spain;[85] a treaty that compelled France to part with all the territory she had acquired in Germany, England retaining the whole of Canada, Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, the Gulf and River of St. Lawrence, Grenada, St. Vincent, Dominica, Tobago, Senegal, some territory to the east of the Mississippi, and Minorca. Spain received Louisiana from France in exchange for Florida, given up to England, France being permitted to retain Belle-Isle, Martinique, and Guadaloupe—also Chandernagor and Pondicherry, on condition that they should not be fortified, and further engaging to demolish the defences at Dunkirk. ‘Such were the results,’ says an eminent French writer of our times, ‘of the Seven Years’ War. Fortunate for England and Prussia, of little cost to Austria, to whom an irreparable loss was simply made too evident; of no moment to Russia, who had availed herself of it for training her army, but most fatal to France, which had entrusted her colonies, her navy, her finances, and her military honour, to her debased nobles.... The minister himself who signed the Treaty of Paris will in time be considered too intelligent and too proud to be the servant of Louis XV. when France, falling a step lower, will have passed out of the hands of Madame de Pompadour into the still viler hands of Madame Dubarry.’ [Sidenote: TAKES TREATY OF PEACE TO FRANCE.]