The conditions of the treaty astonished Europe.  Cardinal Fleury had renounced the ambitious idea suggested to him by Chauvelin; he no longer aspired to impose upon the emperor the complete emancipation of Italy, but he made such disposition as he pleased of the states there, and reconstituted the territories according to his fancy.  The kingdom of Naples and the Two Sicilies were secured to Don Carlos, who renounced Tuscany and the duchies of Parma and Piacenza.  These three principalities were to form the appanage of Duke Francis of Lorraine, betrothed to the Archduchess Maria Theresa.  There it was that France was to find her share of the spoil; in exchange for the dominions formed for him in Italy, Duke Francis ceded the duchies of Lorraine and Bar to King Stanislaus; the latter formally renounced the throne of Poland, at the same time preserving the title of king, and resuming possession of his property; after him, Lorraine and the Barrois were to be united to the crown of France, as dower and heritage of that queen who had been but lately raised to the throne by a base intrigue, and who thus secured to her new country a province so often taken and retaken, an object of so many treaties and negotiations, and thenceforth so tenderly cherished by France.

The negotiations had been protracted.  England, stranger as she had been to the war, had taken part in the diplomatic proposals.  The Queen of Spain had wanted to keep the states in the north of Italy, as well as those in the south.  “Shall I not have a new heir given me by and by? " said the Duke of Tuscany, John Gaston de Medici, last and unworthy scion of that illustrious family, who was dying without posterity.  “Which is the third child that France and the empire mean to father upon me?” The King of Sardinia gained only Novara and Tortona, whilst the emperor recovered Milaness.  France renounced all her conquests in Germany; she guaranteed the Pragmatic-Sanction.  Russia evacuated Poland:  peace seemed to be firmly established in Europe.  Cardinal Fleury hasted to consolidate it, by removing from power the ambitious and daring politician whose influence he dreaded.  “Chauvelin had juggled the war from Fleury,” said the Prince of Prussia, afterwards the great Frederick; “Fleury in turn juggles peace and the ministry from him.”

“It must be admitted,” wrote M. d’Argenson, “that the situation of Cardinal Fleury and the keeper of the seals towards one another is a singular one just now.  The cardinal, disinterested, sympathetic, with upright views, doing nothing save from excess of importunity, and measuring his compliance by the number, and not the weight, of the said importunities,—­the minister, I say, considers himself bound to fill his place as long as he is in this world.  It is only as his own creature that he has given so much advancement to the keeper of the seals, considering him wholly his, good, amiable, and of solid merit, without the aid of any intrigue; and so his adjunction to the premier