Complaints of the Delays in the Conclusion of the Negociation.
Turin, March 24th, 1679.
I have thought it my duty, Sir, to give you advice of my arrival at this court, in order that you may be able to let me know whatever you shall judge necessary; and that whatsoever remains to be done, for the termination of what has been already resolved, may be the more easy of execution, from the proximity of the places at which we respectively are. You cannot doubt its being with this view, that the wish has been expressed for my coming here; and I have been the more glad to come, because I hoped that I should not be long without seeing the effect of the engagements which you have entered into with the king. If I was not aware of your probity and of your zeal for the interests of His Majesty, and for the advantage of the Prince to whom you are attached, I should have been dreadfully uneasy at thedelay of our affair, which ought without fail, and at the latest, to have been concluded at the commencement of this month. But though we are already at the 24th, and that all you can desire on our part is entirely ready, I cannot persuade myself that the intentions of his Highness and your own are other than they always were. You have been so well aware, how much this affair would be useful to him at present, and glorious for the future, and you have made him so well comprehend this, that I cannot have any suspicions on this head; neither can I, when I represent to myself the very considerable interest you have in completing an affair of this importance, of which the conclusion will be considered so great a merit on your part in the eyes of the most generous and the greatest King in the world, who has testified to you himself the good-will he bears you for it; who has praised the address with which you have conducted the negociation; who has begun by giving you several marks of his esteem and liberality; and who has promised you besides such great advantages as would be sufficient to establish all your family, and to make you happy for the rest of your days. As his word has always beeninviolable, you no doubt rely upon it implicitly: you must be aware, also, how dangerous it would be to deceive him, and that, after all the steps he has taken, and the measures he has agreed upon, you would expose his Highness, and yourself, to very great misfortunes, if his Majesty had reason to think that bad faith had been made use of towards him, after a treaty concluded in all the proper forms with himself, and founded upon a full power; the inexecution of which would only serve to ruin a Prince, who abandons himself to your councils, and who would be infallibly stripped by the Spaniards, who would be willing once for all to deliver themselves from the alarms which they have received from the reports spread about on all sides respecting this affair. I have already told you, Sir, that I believe you as well-intentioned as ever, and that it is not for the purpose of exciting you to return to these good sentiments, or to strengthen them, that I speak to you in this manner; but only lest a longer delay should diminish the good opinion entertained of you, and lest umbrage should be taken that an affair in which secrecy was so important, has been made public, although the King, and those who havethe honour to serve him, have kept the secret so well that it cannot have been got at through them. I hope, nevertheless, that we shall soon be satisfied; and that I shall have the pleasure to see you worthily recompensed for your zeal: I assure you, Sir, that your interest, more than my own, though I have much in this affair, makes me desirous of it.
The Abbé d’Estrades.261
261From the work of M. Roux (Fazillac).