e was by law entitled to have.
What she was by law entitled to have was a question which it would have
puzzled all Westminster Hall to answer. But it was well understood that
she would receive, without any contest, the utmost that she could have
any pretence for asking as soon as she and her husband should retire to
Provence or to Italy. [809]

Before the end of July every thing was settled, as far as France
and England were concerned. Meanwhile it was known to the ministers
assembled at Ryswick that Boufflers and Portland had repeatedly met
in Brabant, and that they were negotiating in a most irregular and
indecorous manner, without credentials, or mediation, or notes, or
protocols, without counting each other's steps, and without calling each
other Excellency. So barbarously ignorant were they of the rudiments of
the noble science of diplomacy that they had very nearly accomplished
the work of restoring peace to Christendom while walking up and down
an alley under some apple trees. The English and Dutch loudly applauded
William's prudence and decision. He had cut the knot which the Congress
had only twisted and tangled. He had done in a month what all the
formalists and pedants assembled at the Hague would not have done in
ten years. Nor were the French plenipotentiaries ill pleased. "It
is curious," said Harlay, a man of wit and sense, "that, while the
Ambassadors are making war, the generals should be making peace." [810]
But Spain preserved the same air of arrogant listlessness; and the
ministers of the Emperor, forgetting apparently that their master had,
a few months before, concluded a treaty of neutrality for Italy without
consulting William, seemed to think it most extraordinary that William
should presume to negotiate without consulting their master. It became
daily more evident that the Court of Vienna was bent on prolonging the
war. On the tenth of July the French ministers again proposed fair
and honourable terms of peace, but added that, if those terms were not
accepted by the twenty-first of August, the Most Christian King would
not consider himself bound by his offer. [811] William in vain exhorted
his allies to be reasonable. The senseless pride of one branch of the
House of Austria and the selfish policy of the other were proof to all
argument. The twenty-first of August came and passed; the treaty had not
been signed.

France was at liberty to raise her demands; and she did so. For just at
this tim