"Accept my Pragmatic Sanction," said the Kaiser, "let that be the preliminary of all things."-- "Not the preliminary," answered Fleury; "we will see to that as we go on; not the preliminary, by any means!" There was the rub.
The sly old Cardinal had his private treaties with Sardinia; views of his own in the Mediterranean, in the Rhine quarter; and answered steadily, "Not the preliminary, by any means!" The Kaiser was equally inflexible.

Whereupon immensities of protocolling, arguing, and the Congress "fell into complete languor," say the Histories.

[Scholl, ii.
215.] Congress ate its dinner heartily, and wrote immensely, for the space of eighteen months; but advanced no hair's-breadth any-whither; no prospect before it, but that of dinner only, for unlimited periods.
Kaiser will have his Pragmatic Sanction, or not budge from the place; stands mulelike amid the rain of cudgellings from the by-standers; can be beaten to death, but stir he will not .-- Hints, glances of the eye, pass between Elizabeth Farnese and the other by-standers; suddenly, 9th November, 1729, it is found they have all made a "TREATY OF SEVILLE" with Elizabeth Farnese; France, England, Holland, Spain, have all closed,--Italian Apanages to be at once secured, Ostend to be at once suppressed, with what else behooves;--and the Kaiser is left alone; standing upon his Pragmatic Sanction there, nobody bidding him now budge! At which the Kaiser is naturally thrice and four times wroth and alarmed;--and Seckendorf in the TABAKS-COLLEGIUM had need to be doubly busy.

As we shall find he is (though without effect), when the time comes round:--but we have not yet got to November of this Year 1729; there are still six or eight important months between us and that.
Important months; and a Prussian-English "Waterspout," as we have named it, to be seen, with due wonder, in the political sky!-- Congress of Soissons, now fallen mythical to mankind, and as inane as that of Cambrai, is perhaps still memorable in one or two slight points.
First, it has in it, as one of the Austrian Deputies, that Baron von Bentenrieder, tallest of living Diplomatists, who was pressed at one time for a Prussian soldier;--readers recollect it?
Walking through the streets of Halberstadt, to stretch his long limbs till his carriage came up, the Prussian sentries laid hold of him, "Excellent Potsdam giant, this one!"-- and haled him off to their guard-house; till carriage and lackeys came; then, "Thousand humblest pardons, your Excellenz!" who forgave the fellows.

Barely possible some lighter readers might wish to see, for one moment, an Excellenz that has been seized by a Press-gang?
Which perhaps never happened to any other Excellenz;--the like of which, I have been told, might merit him a soiree from strong-minded women, in some remoter parts of the world.