for the interview.

Aberdeen says it is a _real_ quarrel-not a plot to get rid of us--the King
thoroughly hates Prince Leopold, and he has been made to think the
Ministers have slighted him in this matter. The Duke goes down to him to-
morrow. He can show the King that Leopold was first mentioned by France--
that he was made acquainted with the proposal or rather suggestion made by
France to Leopold on November 9, that he was then told we could not hear of
it till our candidates, Prince John of Saxony and Ferdinand of Orange, were
disposed of. The subject was again mentioned on November 24.

In point of fact the earliest day on which it could have been made known to
the King that France had distinctly proposed Leopold was Monday, and he was
told on the Tuesday.

The King seems to have been violently agitated. He said sneeringly to
Aberdeen, '_If I may be allowed to ask, is Prince Leopold to be married to
a daughter of the Duke of Orleans?_' [Footnote: This marriage took place in
August 1832, when Prince Leopold had become King of the Belgians, and the
Duke of Orleans King of the French.] Aberdeen said he had seen it in the
newspaper and knew nothing more of it. The King alluded to the possibility
of Government going out, admitted the inconvenience just before the meeting
of Parliament, but said he was immovable. Leopold might go to the devil,
but he should not carry English money out of the country. In the morning,
talking to the Duchess of Gloucester, he said, 'If they want a Prince of my
family, they might have had the Duke of Gloucester,' upon which the Duchess
burst out a-laughing.

The King seems thoroughly out of humour. He says 'Things seem going on very
ill in India. Do not you mean to recall Lord William?' He had been made
very angry in the morning by the 'Times' calling upon him to pay his
brother's debts, and this morning the 'Morning Journal' places in
juxtaposition the paragraphs in the 'Times,' and those for which it was
lately prosecuted.

Lady Conyngham is bored to death, and talks and really thinks of removing.
She was to make a grand attack on the King to-day. I suppose she finds the
Duchess of Cumberland gaining influence. Her note to the Duke the other
day, to tell him the Duke of Cumberland had been four hours with the King,
was intended to put him upon his guard.

The Duke does not mean to resign to-morrow, but to request, if he should
not succeed (which Aberdeen thinks he will not do), that