 The former Spanish Prime Minister and then-Ambassador to the French Court, Jerónimo Grimaldi, 1st Duke of Grimaldi, summarized the Spanish position in a letter to Arthur Lee, an American diplomat in Madrid who was trying to persuade the Spanish to declare an open alliance with the fledgling United States.Genoese by birth and a shrewdly calculating politician by nature, Grimaldi demurred, replying, "You have considered your own situation, and not ours.The moment is not yet come for us.