[136] Vide the character of Lord Weymouth, supra vol. ii. pp. 176, 177, and vol. iii. pp. 135, 136.—E.
[137] A very different account of this transaction is given in the Appendix, from the Memoirs of the Duke of Grafton, and no doubt it is the true one.—E.
[138] He had prevailed on Grimaldi to attempt making peace; but the latter having the fate of Squillace before his eyes, would not take it on himself, but advised his master to call the Castilians to council. They, persuaded that a commercial nation, as England was, would not make war for a rock, exhorted the King to maintain his point of honour. D’Aranda, his favourite, agreed with the Castilians; but though the King, who, from the time he was King of Naples, and had been humbled into a neutrality by our navy, hated this country, yet he was at that moment so much influenced by Grimaldi, that he rose abruptly and broke up the council. [The King, independently of Grimaldi, was personally inclined to come to an accommodation with England at almost any rate.—(Malmesbury Dispatches, vol. ii. p. 66.)—E.]
[139] The Comte du Châtelet (Choiseul’s friend), when Ambassador in England, told me that the Duc de Choiseul, though knowing he himself should be the successor, gave the Cardinal de Bernis warning of his approaching fall; but was not credited.
[140] The Duchesse de Grammont, sister of Choiseul, and the Princesse de Beauvau, her friend.
[141] Louis Philippeaux, created Duc de la Vrillière—the brother-in-law of Maurepas—a willing instrument of oppression, being licentious, selfish, and unprincipled, like too many of his colleagues. He died childless, in 1777, in his seventy-third year.—E.
[142] See some account of La Chalotais, supra, vol. ii. p. 246.
[143] Yet that was, in fact, only the ostensible weight that seemed to turn the scale. The Cabal were willing to let the Prince have the apparent credit of deciding his master. They had long been urging him to dismiss Choiseul; but they did not wish that a measure distasteful to the public should be rendered more so by their removing him to prevent a war with England. The Administration that succeeded Choiseul, immediately acted upon principles so consentaneous to those of the Court of London, namely, by exalting the prerogative, and by destruction of the Parliaments, that it was impossible but the two Courts should grow cordial friends; and so they continued to the death of Louis Quinze.
[144] The King ordered La Vrillière to say that it was out of regard to the Duchesse de Choiseul that he did not send the Duke farther off.
[145] The wife and the sister pretended to make a formal reconciliation, declaring that they gave up their own resentments that they might not disturb the Duke’s retirement and tranquillity. That Madame de Choiseul could not, however, forgive the injuries and insults she had received, appeared fifteen years afterwards; for, retiring into a convent on the Duke’s death, and Madame de Grammont, who was a large woman, and probably grown more corpulent, going to visit her, Madame de Choiseul excused herself from seeing her, on pretence that the conventual stairs were so narrow that Madame de Grammont would have difficulty to ascend them.