Yesterday morning at two o'clock I called on Thiers by appointment, found him in a very pretty apartment full of beautiful drawings, copies of Italian frescoes, pictures, bronzes, books and cahiers of MS., the sheets (much corrected and interlined I could see) of his work. These he told me were his 'seul délassement,' and that politics never interrupted his literary labour. We then talked about the present state of affairs, and very amusing he was, sparing nobody and talking with his usual abundance and openness. He said he had read the notes that had passed between Palmerston and Guizot; that his own opinion was that Guizot would break down on the procédés, but that at all events it was a quarrel à outrance; that each accused the other of bad faith, and could only justify himself by fixing that imputation on his antagonist; that moderation became impossible when such charges were bandied, and he had read with astonishment the strong things contained in these notes; that if Guizot had the worst of this encounter he would fall, not however by the desertion of the majority, not by this Chamber, but through the King. 'You must not,' he said, 'believe what you hear of the strength of the Government and of its security; don't believe all Madame de Lieven tells you; c'est une bavarde, une menteuse, et une sotte; vous l'avez beaucoup connue, vous avez été son amant, n'est-ce pas?' I defended myself from the imputation, and assured him that though she had had lovers when first she came to England I never had had the honour of being one of them. He then said he would tell me what would happen: the King se faisait illusion that the Whig Government could not stand; but when he found out that this was an error il aurait peur; and if we continued to refuse to be reconciled, he would get rid of Guizot. The present Chamber would not overthrow him, but the King would. 'Savez-vous ce que c'est que le Roi? Le mot est grossier, mais vous le comprendrez. Eh bien, c'est un poltron.'[6] I said I was surprised to hear this, for we thought he was un homme de coeur, and had given proofs of his courage very often. 'Non, non, je vous dis qu'il est poltron, et quand il se trouvera définitivement mal avec vous il aura peur; alors il suscitera des embarras à Guizot; il y a quarante ou cinquante hommes dans la Chambre, je les connais, qui tourneront contre lui, et de cette manière il tombera, pas par la Chambre, encore moins par vous.' He said the accusations had been so strong that each Minister was bound to prove his own case and the mauvaise foi of his adversary, and Guizot would stand or fall by the result of the explanations. 'Vous pouvez être sûr que ce que je vous dis est la vérité, d'autant plus que ce n'est pas moi qui lui succéderai, c'est Molé. Cependant je vous parle franchement, et je vous avoue que je serais enchanté de sa chute; d'abord parce que je le déteste, et après, parce que l'alliance anglaise est impossible avec lui; c'est un traître et un menteur qui s'est conduit indignement envers moi, mais je ne serai pas ministre.' However, he could afford to wait; he was forty-eight years old, and his health excellent. As long as the King was in no danger he would never send for him; as soon as he was he would send for him. The King could endure nobody who would not consent to be his tool; he would never take office without being his master, et j'en viendrai à bout; he would rather continue in his independence than take office on any other terms. He told me he had seen the notes, and was amazed at the sharpness of their contents. We then went out together, and walked to the Faubourg St. Honoré, talking about his book, Napoleon, etc.
CONVERSATION WITH M. THIERS.
At night.—I have been dining with Thiers, and met Odilon Barrot, Cousin, Rémusat, Duvergier de Hauranne, Mignet, and several others I can't remember. They were all prodigiously civil to me, and with Cousin and Mignet I had a great deal of conversation. Palmerston's note arrived this morning. It is very clever and well done, but too long, and his polémique about the Treaty of Utrecht in my opinion déplacée and mischievous. But he is determined to urge this point, and is endeavouring to get the Allied Powers to join with him in a protest or some formal expression of opinion upon it. I don't believe they will ever do this; but if they did, it would probably produce most serious consequences. His policy in this is perfectly inconceivable to me. Normanby read it to Guizot this afternoon, and at the same time offered him the despatch of the 19th July (to Bulwer), and Aberdeen's to Sotomayor to publish with the other pieces, both or neither, but he refused them. I had another furious set-to with Madame de Lieven, who is the most imprudent woman I ever saw; but we always part friends. Normanby has shown Thiers several papers, and Molé many more he tells me. I have begged him to be cautious.
FEAR OF THE COBURG MARRIAGE.
January 12th.—I called on Guizot yesterday by appointment; found him more stiff and reserved than the first time, and not apparently in good sorts. He did not appear to have anything particular to say, but reverted to the old topics; that he would not go again over the same arguments; but it was clear that from the beginning Lord Palmerston had a fixed policy which he had immediately begun to carry out: to raise the Progressista party in Spain, and destroy the Moderado and French influence with it; that we fancied ourselves obliged to substitute English for French influence there as an indispensable security for our power in the Mediterranean; and we appealed to the Treaty of Utrecht; that great changes had taken place since that time. It was true France had acquired Algeria, and through it a certain power in the Mediterranean; but that we had acquired Gibraltar, Malta, and Corfu, which we had not been possessed of before, and which were quite sufficient to secure our power there. He said a great deal more of Palmerston, for he still insists, and either believes, or at all events pretends to believe, that Palmerston was bent on the Coburg marriage, and doing his utmost to bring it about. He really thinks it was sound policy on his part, and for that reason was pursuing it. I again and again assured him he was mistaken. 'You forget,' I said, 'that when this affair began, Palmerston had not been ten days in office, was overwhelmed with business, and had many other things more pressing to occupy his attention. He had found an understanding concluded with Aberdeen, which he accepted. He had no thoughts of doing anything; he knew of nothing urgent that had occurred, and the truth is, il n'y pensait pas.' 'Comment!' he said, rather angrily, 'il n'y pensait pas? Est-ce que vous nous prenez pour dupes que vous voulez nous faire croire cela? 'I said I believed it was so; that this Spanish question which was of such deep interest to them was of much less interest to us; and 'why,' I said, 'if you considered the matter so urgent, if you knew what was going on in Spain (which Lord Palmerston did not), and considered the marriage you so feared to be imminent, why did not you go at once to Palmerston and tell him so?' 'Ce n'était pas à moi,' he replied, 'de faire l'éducation de Lord Palmerston.' 'No,' I said; 'mais c'était à vous de faire vos propres affaires, and to communicate frankly with him when you wanted his assistance.' He would not allow this. I said, since I had been here and had seen and heard a great many things I did not know before, I had become convinced that his alarm about the Coburg marriage was perfectly sincere, that he really did believe it was likely to take place, and that the real object of the King had been to get the Spanish Court to wait and not insist on an immediate marriage; that it was not the despatch of July 19, but the mission of Miraflores and what he had said to the King which had really alarmed them. He said this was not exact; it was not that which had given them the alarm, but from various circumstances they were convinced that the Coburg marriage would have been settled offhand if they had not taken decisive steps to prevent it; that this marriage it was impossible for France to tolerate. There was already a Coburg in England, another in Portugal, and to have had a third at Madrid would have been to make Spain a part of Portugal, and to have exhibited to all the world the triumph of English over French influence; that this combination which we wanted to bring about, they were bound to defeat, and then again assuming that our Court was bent on it, he said: 'Le fait est que vous êtes meilleurs courtisans que nous.' I told him that I was assured the Court had never sought this alliance, and that Prince Albert had long ago written to his cousin to say that he must not think of it, as it was impossible.
I then asked him why Christina had been so impatient to conclude a marriage of some sort, and why she could not wait as the King had advised. He said, for reasons partly personal and partly political; that Queen Christina was a very extraordinary woman—'très habile, avec un esprit très impartial'—that she had no prejudices, and he had heard her talk of her greatest enemies, of Espartero even, without rancour and with candour; that she had great courage, patience and perseverance, and never quitted a purpose she had once conceived; that royalty was irksome to her, and government and political power she did not care about except so far as they were instrumental to the real objects of her life, which were to live easily, enjoy herself, and amass money for her children, who were numerous, and whom she was very anxious to enrich; that she was aware of the precarious nature of her influence, and felt the necessity of connecting herself with, and obtaining the support of, one of the great Powers—England or France—the latter by preference, but the former if not the latter; that she had, therefore, always wanted the King to give her his son for the Queen, and when he refused this, she had got angry and turned to the Coburg alliance and the English connexion; that besides, the young Queen was impatient to be married, and that if they had not found her a husband, she would infallibly have taken a lover. 'Vous ne savez pas ce que c'est que ces princesses Espagnoles et Siciliennes; elles ont le diable au corps, et on a toujours dit que si nous ne nous hâtions pas, l'héritier viendrait avant le mari.' For these reasons she was impatient to conclude, and she infallibly would have concluded the marriage with the Prince of Coburg if we had persisted in refusing the Duke de Montpensier, and had not effected some other arrangement. She trusted that the King, her uncle, would have accepted the fait accompli, and at all events that she should have been secure of English support.
THE FRENCH PAPERS.
I then said that after all what was now most important was to look to the future, that our quarrel must be fought out, but that a short time would bring those discussions to an end. What was to happen then? I believed and hoped that he was not likely to be renversé here, and I was satisfied Lord Palmerston would not be in England, and how were the affairs of the two Governments to be conducted between them? If Spain, which had once been a military champ de bataille, was henceforward to be a political champ de bataille between the two countries, I did not see how any entente was possible. Must this last for ever? or was it impossible that the two Governments should unite in bringing about a better state of things in Spain, and giving to her in reality something of the freedom and independence which she possessed in name? He seemed by no means disposed to enter on this subject, and as I thought I observed in his manner some symptoms of a desire that our conversation should terminate, I rose and took leave of him. He was very civil, but rather formal and ceremonious on my going away.
Paris, January 13th.—This morning we read in the newspapers the pièces remises by Guizot to the Chamber of Peers, and among them, to our great surprise, an extract of Palmerston's despatch to Bulwer of July 19, Guizot having refused Palmerston's offer to place it (with Aberdeen's to Sotomayor) at his disposal. Normanby immediately wrote him a very strong note complaining of this publication after what had passed between them. In the afternoon I saw Madame de Lieven, who made very light of it, and treated it as a frivolous complaint. Bacourt, who was there, endeavoured to find excuses for Guizot, but was obliged to confess that he had no right to use this without our permission. When I got home I found Guizot's reply had come. He said he had given nothing more than he had quoted in one of his notes, and had done no more than produce the English version of what he had quoted in French, and he asserted his right to do this. He finished, however, by saying that if Normanby would send him the two despatches, he would add them to the other documents. Normanby wrote back word that he regretted he should have produced this extract in a manner calculated to give a false impression of the tenor of the despatch, sent him the documents, and hoped, as he was going to publish more, he would produce Palmerston's last note. There has been a schism here in the Opposition; Billault, Dufaure, and thirty or forty deputies have separated from Thiers, and are preparing to join Molé if Guizot falls. It seems clear that neither party will take our side on the marriage question, and that the Government will not be attacked at all in the Peers, and very probably very feebly in the Deputies.
January 16th.—For the last two days I have been sightseeing, Hôtel Cluny, Churches, Notre-Dame, Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois, the Gallery of the Louvre, and all day yesterday was at Versailles. I had not seen it for above thirty years, and was struck with the vast dimensions and the ugliness of the building; it is, however, interesting on the whole.