A congress was opened at Aix-la-Chapelle, presided over by the nuncio of the new pope, Clement IX., as favorable to France as his predecessor, Innocent X., had been to Spain.

"A phantom arbiter between phantom plenipotentiaries," says Voltaire, in the Siecle de Louis XIV.

The real negotiations were going on at St.Germain.
"I did not look merely," writes Louis XIV., "to profit by the present conjuncture, but also to put myself in a position to turn to my advantage those which might probably arrive.

In view of the great increments that my fortune might receive, nothing seemed to me more necessary than to establish for myself amongst my smaller neighbors such a character for moderation and probity as might assuage in them those emotions of dread which everybody naturally experiences at sight of too great a power.
I was bound not to lack means of breaking with Spain when I pleased; Franche-Comte, which I gave up, might become reduced to such a condition that I should be master of it at any moment, and my new conquests, well secured, would open for me a surer entrance into the Low Countries." Determined by these wise motives, the king gave orders to sign the peace.
"M.

de Turenne appeared yesterday like a man who had received a blow from a club," writes Michael Le Tellier to his son: "when Don Juan arrives, matters will change; he says that, meanwhile, all must go on just the same, and he repeated it more than a dozen times, which made the prince laugh." Don Juan did not protest, and on the 2d of May, 1668, the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was concluded.