inions,
appeared to moderate impartial men fair and reasonable in
themselves, and such as we might accept without dishonour. We had
a very long talk, which was principally of importance as showing
the state of her husband's mind, and I told Lord Holland
afterwards what I had said to her, at which he expressed great
satisfaction. I found afterwards that there has been a
correspondence between Palmerston and Holland, begun by the
former, and the object of it to vent his complaints at the
undisguised hostility of Holland House to the Treaty and its
policy. It ended by Holland's refusing to continue it, and
referring Palmerston to the Cabinet on Monday, when the whole
question would come under consideration.

[Page Head: COUNT WALEWSKI'S MISSION TO EGYPT.]

This morning I received a note from Guizot, begging I would call
on him as soon as I could. I went almost directly, when he
produced a letter from Thiers, in which he desired Guizot to go
immediately to Palmerston, and in the most formal and solemn
manner to deny, in his name and in the name of France, that the
mission of Walewski[16] had had any such object as that which had
been imputed to it; that he had not endeavoured to persuade the
Pasha not to accede to the terms imposed upon him, and that if he
was disposed to accept them, 'La France ne se montrerait pas plus
ambitieuse pour lui qu'il ne l'etait pour lui-meme,' and would
certainly not interfere to prevent the execution of the Treaty.
Moreover, he was to say that Walewski had not gone to
Constantinople as the agent of the Pasha, but only to convey to
M. de Pontois the intelligence of the communication which the
Pasha had made to the Sultan through Rifat Bey, Rifat Bey having
been despatched on the 6th with a very submissive letter from
Mehemet Ali to the Sultan, in which he asked him to grant certain
terms, the substance of which has been already made known. Guizot
then said that he had likewise received authority to declare that
if the Sultan accepted the terms proposed by Mehemet Ali, or even
some modification of them (such as France could approve of), with
the consent and concurrence of his Allies, and if he invited
France to be a party to the new arrangement, and to join in
guaranteeing a due execution of its provisions, France would
accept such invitation, and would join the other Allies in
compelling Mehemet Ali to a strict observance of the arrangement,
and would, if necessary, use measures of coercio