feelings; but he chose
to abide by the official language of Louis, and to advise the Powers to
accept the new situation.[15]

This peaceful turn of affairs sorely troubled the French Princes and
Burke. In August and September 1791 his son Richard was at Coblentz, and
informed his father of the consternation of the _emigres_ on hearing
that the Emperor declined to draw the sword. Burke himself was equally
agitated, and on or about 24th September had a long interview with Pitt
and Grenville, at the house of the latter. We gather from Burke's
"Letters on the Conduct of our Domestic Parties," that it was the first
time he had met Pitt in private; and the meeting must have been somewhat
awkward. After dining, with Grenville as host, the three men conferred
together till eleven o'clock, discussing the whole situation "very
calmly" (says Burke); but we can fancy the tumult of feelings in the
breast of the old man when he found both Ministers firm as adamant
against intervention in France. "They are certainly right as to their
general inclinations," he wrote to his son, "perfectly so, I have not a
shadow of doubt; but at the same time they are cold and dead as to any
attempt whatsoever to give them effect." The heat of the Irish royalist
failed to kindle a spark of feeling in the two cousins. He found that
their "deadness" proceeded from a rooted distrust of the Emperor
Leopold, and from a conviction that Britain had nothing to fear from
Jacobinical propaganda. Above all they believed that the present was not
the time for action, especially as the imminence of bankruptcy in France
would discredit the new Legislative Assembly, and render an invasion
easier in the near future.

Are we to infer from this that Pitt and his cousin looked forward to a
time when the monarchs could invade France with safety? Such an
inference would be rash. It is more probable that they here found an
excuse for postponing their decision and a means of calming an insistent
visitor. Certainly they impressed Burke with a belief in their sincere
but secret sympathy with the royalist cause. The three men also agreed
in suspecting Leopold, though Burke tried to prove that his treachery
was not premeditated, but sprang from "some complexional inconstancy."
Pitt and Grenville, knowing the doggedness with which the Emperor pushed
towards his goal, amidst many a shift and turn, evidently were not
convinced.

At this time they had special reasons for distrust