He sent his secretary to complain to M. Menager, demand satisfaction, and say that if it were not given, he should take it.  Menager replied, in writing, that although this was but an affair between lackeys, he was far from approving ill behaviour in his servants towards other servants, particularly towards servants of Count Rechteren, and he was ready to send to the Count those lackeys whom he had seen misbehaving, or even those whom his other servants should point out as guilty of the offensive conduct.  Rechteren, when the answer arrived, was gone to the Hague, and it was forwarded to his colleague, M. Moerman.  Upon his return to Utrecht, Rechteren sent his secretary again to Menager, with the complaint as before, and received the answer as before.  He admitted that he had not himself seen the grimaces and insulting gestures, but he ought, he said, to be at liberty to send his servants into Menager’s house for the detection of the offenders.  A few days afterwards Menager and Rechteren were on the chief promenade of Utrecht, with others who were Plenipotentiaries of the United Provinces, and after exchange of civilities, Rechteren said that he was still awaiting satisfaction.  Menager replied as before, and said that his lackeys all denied the charge against them.  Menager refused also to allow the accusers of his servants to come into his house and be their judges.  Rechteren said he would have justice yet upon master and men.  He was invested with a sovereign power as well as Menager.  He was not a man to take insults.  He spoke some words in Dutch to his attendants, and presently Menager’s lackeys came with complaint that the lackeys of Rechteren tripped them up behind, threw them upon their faces, and threatened them with knives.  Rechteren told the French Plenipotentiary that he would pay them for doing that, and discharge them if they did not do it.  Rechteren’s colleagues did what they could to cover or excuse his folly, and begged that the matter might not appear in a despatch to France or be represented to the States-general, but be left to the arbitration of the English Plenipotentiaries.  This the French assented to, but they now demanded satisfaction against Rechteren, and refused to accept the excuse made for him, that he was drunk.  He might, under other circumstances, says M. Torcy, the French minister of the time, in his account of the Peace Negociations, have dismissed the petty quarrel of servants by accepting such an excuse but, says M. de Torcy, ’it was desirable to retard the Conferences, and this dispute gave a plausible reason.’  Therefore until the King of France and Bolingbroke had come to a complete understanding, the King of France ordered his three Plenipotentiaries to keep the States-general busy, with the task of making it clear to his French Majesty whether Rechteren’s violence was sanctioned by them, or whether he had acted under private passion, excited by the Ministers of the House of Austria.  Then they must further assent to a prescribed form of disavowal, and deprive Rechteren of his place as a deputy.  This was the high policy of the affair of the lackeys, which, as Addison says, held all the affairs of Europe in suspense, a policy avowed with all complacency by the high politician who was puller of the strings. (Memoires de Torcy, Vol. iii. pp. 411-13.)