But the fortunes of his Empire then rested on a Piedmontese nobleman, St.Marsan, who showed a singular credulity as to Prussia's subservience.

He accepted all Hardenberg's explanations (including a thin official reproof to Steffens), and did little or nothing to countermine the diplomatic approaches of Russia.
The ground being thus left clear, it was possible for the Czar to speak straight to the heart of Frederick William.

This he now did.
Knesebeck was set aside; and Alexander, meeting the Prussian demands halfway, promised in a treaty, signed at Kalisch on February 27th, to leave Prussia all her present territories, and to secure for her the equivalent, in a "statistical, financial, and geographical sense," of the lands which she had lost since 1806, along with a territory adapted to connect Prussia Proper with the province of Silesia.[285] It seems certain that Stein's influence weighed much with Alexander in this final compromise, which postponed the irritating question of the eastern frontier and bent all the energies of two great States to the War of Liberation.

Stein was sent to Frederick William at Breslau; but the King hardly deigned to see him, and the greatest of German patriots was suffered to remain in a garret of that city during a wearisome attack of fever.

But he lived through disease and official neglect as he triumphed over Slavonic intrigues; and he had at hand that salve of many an able man--the knowledge that, even while he himself was slighted, his plans were adopted with beneficent and far-reaching results.
The Russo-Prussian alliance was firmly upheld by Lord Cathcart, the British ambassador to Russia, who reached headquarters on March the 2nd.