the prince, the wary lawyer used to
steal into the king's chamber, and seek guidance or encouragement from
the madman's restless eyes. Was the malady curable? If curable, how
long a time would elapse before the return of reason? These were the
questions which the Chancellor put to himself, as he debated whether he
should break with the Tories and go over to the Whigs. Through the
action of the patient's disease, the most delicate part of the lawyer's
occupation was gone; and having no longer a king's conscience to keep,
he did not care, by way of diversion--to keep his own.

For many days ere they received clear demonstration of the Chancellor's
deceit, the other members of the cabinet suspected that he was acting
disingenuously, and when his double-dealing was brought to their sure
knowledge, their indignation was not even qualified with surprise. The
story of his exposure is told in various ways; but all versions concur
in attributing his detection to an accident. Like the gallant of the
French court, whose clandestine intercourse with a great lady was
discovered because, in his hurried preparations for flight from her
chamber, he appropriated one of her stockings, Thurlow, according to one
account, was convicted of perfidy by the prince's hat, which he bore
under his arm on entering the closet where the ministers awaited his
coming. Another version says that Thurlow had taken his seat at the
council-table, when his hat was brought to him by a page, with an
explanation that he had left it in the prince's private room. A third,
and more probable representation of the affair, instead of laying the
scene in the council-chamber, makes the exposure occur in a more public
part of the castle. "When a council was to be held at Windsor," said the
Right Honorable Thomas Grenville, in his old age recounting the
particulars of the mishap, "to determine the course which ministers
should pursue, Thurlow had been there some time before any of his
colleagues arrived. He was to be brought back to London by one of them,
and the moment of departure being come, the Chancellor's hat was
nowhere to be found. After a fruitless search in the apartment where the
council had been held, a page came with the hat in his hand, saying
aloud, and with great _naivete_, 'My lord, I found it in the closet of
his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.' The other Ministers were still
in the Hall, and Thurlow's confusion corroborated the inference which
the