hocked, you will be
singly so; Charles will not be so, it is my firm belief. As soon as
Lavie comes to you, he will tell you how far Mr. Crewe has embraced
that idea, and what has been the consequence of it. If you will sue
Lord H(ollan)d and Mr. Powell, or (for?) them, in Charles's name,
you will do your business. But I do not say that it is time for
that.

What I proposed to Lord Gower was only this, and that cannot have
nothing (sic) rebutant in it, to either Charles or you. It is this.
To hear Charles's story patiently, but to answer or reason with him
as little as possible. To desire that he would be so good as to meet
you at your own house, with Mr. Wallis and Mr. Gregg; we will have
nothing to do with Lavie, pour le moment. Il ne respectera pas
celui-ci comme les deux autres. Discuss with them before Charles the
means of extricating yourself from these engagements. Let him hear
what they say, and what they would advise you to do, as guardian to
your children; for there is the point de vue, in which I am touched
the most sensibly; and whatever Charles has to offer by way of
expedient, by way of correcting their ideas, whatever hopes he can
give, which are rationally founded, let him lay them before these
people in your presence.

Why I wish this is, the [that] he must then have something to combat
with, and that is, truth and reason. Without that, and you two
together only, or Hare, what will follow? There will be flux de
bouche, which to me is totally incomprehensible, as Sir G.
M('Cartney) told me that it was to him. Il fondera en larmes, and
then you will be told afterwards, whenever a measure of any vigour
is proposed, that you had acquiesced, because you had been disarmed,
confounded. This happened no longer ago than last Saturday, with
Foley,(98) who related the whole conference to me, and the manner in
which it was carried on. "However," says Foley, "I carried two
points out of four, but I was obliged to leave him, not being able
[to] resist the force of sensibility."

I confess that, had it been my case, I should have been tempted to
have made use of Me de Maintenon's words to the Princesse de Conti--
"Pleurez, pleurez, Madame, car c'est un grand malheur que de n'avoir
pas le coeur bon." I do not think that of Charles so much as the
rest of the world does, and to which he has undoubtedly given some
reason by his behaviour to his father, and to his friends. I
attribute it all to a vanity that has, by t