While Metternich and Alexander were indulging themselves in the Palm Palace, Talleyrand was working on a document that would annoy the four ministers even more than his performance of that afternoon. His note was ready the next day, 1 October, when he sent it round to the plenipotentiaries of all eight signatories of the Treaty of Paris. It proposed that while the eight should indeed be the ones in charge of preparing the groundwork and the form the conference was to take, and should appoint committees to deal with specific questions, they had no right to make decisions governing the whole of
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