ry anxious to leave the Castle, and it was Sir William Knighton
who with great difficulty induced her to stay there. At that time
she was in wretched spirits, and did nothing but pray from
morning till night. However, her conscience does not seem ever to
have interfered with her ruling passion, avarice, and she went on
accumulating. During the last illness waggons were loaded every
night and sent away from the Castle, but what their contents were
was not known, at least Batchelor did not say. All Windsor knew
this. Those servants of the King who were about his person had
opportunities of hearing a great deal, for he used to talk of
everybody before them, and without reserve or measure.

This man Batchelor had become a great favourite with the late
King. The first of his pages, William Holmes, had for some time
been prevented by ill health from attending him. Holmes had been
with him from a boy, and was also a great favourite; by
appointments and perquisites he had as much as L12,000 or L14,000
a year, but he had spent so much in all sorts of debauchery and
living like a gentleman that he was nearly ruined. There seems to
have been no end to the _tracasseries_ between these men; their
anxiety to get what they could out of the King's wardrobe in the
last weeks, and their dishonesty in the matter, were excessive,
all which he told me in great detail. The King was more than
anybody the slave of habit and open to impressions, and even when
he did not like people he continued to keep them about him rather
than change.

While I was at Stoke news came that Charles X. had arrived off
Portsmouth. He has asked for an asylum in Austria, but when once
he has landed here he will not move again, I dare say. The
enthusiasm which the French Revolution produced is beginning to
give way to some alarm, and not a little disgust at the Duke of
Orleans' conduct, who seems anxious to assume the character of a
Jacobin King, affecting extreme simplicity and laying aside all
the pomp of royalty. I don't think it can do, and there is
certainly enough to cause serious disquietude for the future.

Sefton in the meantime told me that Brougham and Lord Grey were
prepared for a violent opposition, and that they had effected a
formal junction with Huskisson, being convinced that no
Government could now be formed without him. I asked him if
Palmerston was a party to this junction, and he said he was, but
the first thing I heard when I got to town wa