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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
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