In October Lord Chatham went to Bath, where I happened to be. He came to me, and we had a conversation of two hours. Nothing could be more frank and unreserved than his behaviour. He asked me earnestly if I did not think that France intended to keep peace with us? I replied, I was sure in the present distress of their circumstances they must keep it: and that I was as sure from the terror I had seen they felt at _his_ name, that they would be still more disposed to keep it now he was Minister. He lamented that we could get no allies; that he saw no day-light. The session he thought he should carry through easily. To flatter me he commended Mr. Conway highly, particularly for his Whiggism--“and am not I,” said he, “Lord Camden, and Lord Shelburne, Whigs?” Yet he wished to take some of all parties. The Duke of Bedford, indeed, had made himself nobody. Lord Gower was considerable, and ought to be high. If the Duke and Duchess desired it, Rigby might be taken care of; but when Cabinet places were so scarce, they wanted one for Lord Weymouth--a very pretty man, Lord Weymouth!--but that could not be. He had been offered the embassy to Spain, but would not accept it; nor Postmaster, though it had been held by Lord Grantham, who had been Secretary of State. The King, he said, was very gracious to him, and he believed in earnest--and then dropped these remarkable words: “If I was in possession of the citadel of Lisle, and was told there was a mine under my feet, I would say, I do not believe it.” His opinion of his Majesty’s sincerity was therefore exactly the same as mine. I took great pains to cultivate harmony between him and Mr. Conway, because I feared it was little likely to last. The negotiation with the Duke of Bedford had been renewed at Bath by Lord Northington and Mr. Nugent. The Duke himself came thither and they had an interview, in which Lord Chatham desired artfully to open himself to his Grace, and declared against Continental measures, subsidies, &c. (the very objects in which he had been disappointed, but against which the Duke’s humour then lay.) They could not agree on Lord Weymouth, which made the Duke profess his unwillingness to abandon his friends, though ready to abandon them if that point had been accorded. However Lord Chatham had made so much impression that, on the Duke’s return to London, and being instantly beset by Grenville, the Duke said he was unpopular enough already, and would not be torn to pieces for condemning the embargo on corn. He would vote for the Address, and insisted that Rigby should. The latter begged to go out of town, and said to his friends that Lord Chatham had duped the Duke of Bedford, and the King Lord Gower, who had been particularly distinguished at Court; that they were undone if they voted with Administration before their bargain was made. Lord Temple and Lord Lyttelton went to the Lord Mayor’s feast, but were totally neglected by the citizens. CHAPTER XVII.