Monsieur Castan is cunning and assiduous, but when presented with something outside his scope he does not respond well, and is apt to become flustered and then irritable. This happened very early in our talks with the House of Hacklheber. It took some time for me to understand why: Lothar believes that the invasion will never actually happen; or that if it does, it will be snuffed out within a few hours. In consequence, our negotiations over the terms of these Bills were strangely duplicitous. The nominal purpose was to pay troops in England, and so we had to settle terms in such a way that we—meaning France—could get silver coin in England, while allowing Lothar to realize some profit. In that sense I got what we wanted, viz. wholly legitimate, negotiable Bills which you now have in your hand. But Lothar’s true purpose, as I eventually came to understand, was to reap a large windfall at very little risk by expressing a willingness to forward silver for an invasion that would never materialize. In effect he was selling us insurance against the contingency that our invasion fails to fail. It was this subtext that M. Castan had not understood, with the result that he was bewildered by what he saw as erratic demands made by the House of Hacklheber.