On 5 October the four ministers met for what Hardenberg described as a ‘very stormy conference about Mr Club-foot’s notes’. The upshot was a forceful letter to Talleyrand in which Castlereagh summed up their views. This merely elicited a reply in which Talleyrand protested that while ‘nobody likes bringing up difficulties less than I do; nobody wishes more ardently than me to simplify, abbreviate and to conclude’, he held to his conviction that denying the whole congress a say in the initiation of the process would be to deny its final decisions popular legitimacy.
