Sheridan challenged from Rolle some token of satisfaction at the information; but Rolle merely returned that he had indeed received an answer, but that the House must form their own opinion on it. In the discussions which ensued, a channel was nevertheless opened for mutual concessions--which ended eventually in the relief of the prince from pecuniary embarrassments, part of which were ascribed to the king's having appropriated to his own use the revenues of the duchy of Cornwall, and refusing to render any account of them on the prince's coming of age. It was the mediation of the Duchess of Gordon that brought the matter promptly to a conclusion, and through her representations, Dundas was sent to Canton House, to ascertain from the prince the extent of his liabilities; an assurance was given that immediate steps would be taken to relieve his Royal Highness. The interview was enlivened by a considerable quantity of wine; and after a pretty long flow of the generous bowl, Dundas's promises were energetically ratified. Never was there a man more "malleable," to use Wraxall's expression, than Harry Dundas. Pitt soon afterward had an audience equally amicable with the prince. From this period until after the death of Pitt, in 1806, the Duchess of Cordon's influence remained in the ascendant. The last years of the man whom she had destined for her son-in-law, and who had ever been on terms of the greatest intimacy with her, were clouded. Pitt had the misfortune not only of being a public man,--for to say that is to imply a sacrifice of happiness,--but to be a public man solely. He would turn neither to marriage, nor to books, nor to agriculture, nor even to friendship, for the repose of a mind that could not, from insatiable ambition, find rest. He died involved in debt--in terror and grief for his country. He is said never to have been in love. At twenty-four he had the sagacity, the prudence, the reserve of a man of fifty. His excess in wine undermined his constitution, but was source of few comments when his companions drank more freely than men in office had ever been known to do since the time of Charles II. Unloved he lived; and alone, uncared for, unwept, he died. That he was nobly indifferent to money, that he had a contempt for everything mean, or venal, or false, was, in those days, no ordinary merit. During the whirl of gaiety, politics, and matchmaking, the Duchess of Gordon continued to read, and to correspond with Beattie upon topics of less perishable interest than the factions of the hour. Beattie sent her his "Essay on Beauty" to read in manuscript; he wrote to her about Petrarch, about Lord Monboddo's works, and Burke's book on the French Revolution,--works which the duchess found time to read and wished to analyse. Their friendship, so honoured to her, continued until his death in 1803.