_May 14th._--I have written nothing here for many weeks, but no great loss, for I have not had much to say, if anything. I am tempted to resume my pen to record rather a curious event. I have heard this morning of a mission from Paris to Louis Philippe, and the result of it. The leaders of the Conservative party there, all except Thiers, have come to a resolution that the only chance of restoring the Monarchy is by a reconciliation of the elder and the Orleans branches, by the recognition of Henri V., and by persuading Louis Philippe and his family to accept this solution of the dynastic question. They have accordingly sent over M. Malac to Claremont to communicate their sentiments to the King. He was authorised to tell him that the Legitimists were willing to acknowledge his title and his reign, and even the benefits that France had derived from his government. The King entered into the subject with great frankness, treating with indifference the offers which were personal to himself, saying he had no need of any recognition of his reign, of which history would bear sufficient record. He, however, acquiesced in the views of the party who sent M. Malac, and declared himself ready to agree to their terms, but he said that the women of his family would be the most strenuous opponents of such a compromise. He assembled a sort of _conseil de famille_, consisting of the Queen and the Princes (not the Duchess of Orleans), and laid before them the proposal that had been made to him. The Queen declared against it, the Princes were all for it, and finally the Queen said she would defer to the opinion of the King. He then proposed to the Ambassador to go and talk to the Duchess of Orleans, from whom the greatest obstacles were to be expected. He declined to speak to her on the subject, but said he would go and see her, which he did. She received him, talked of all other subjects, but not a word about the succession. On repeating to His Majesty what had passed, he said he would send for her and talk to her, and after having done so, he desired M. Malac to return and she would enter on the affair. He went to her again and spoke to her with great frankness, representing that the Orleans party was by far the weakest in France, and that her religion would always make the people more or less, and the clergy entirely, hostile to her. She was much startled and discomposed at hearing language to which she seemed not to have been accustomed; but though she did not avow it she was not unmoved by his representations. He described various other meetings and conversations which had occurred in which the Queen of the Belgians took part (strongly adverse to the proposal), and finally he departed, without indeed any formal acceptance of the overtures, but carrying back such expressions of opinion and disposition on the part of the family as amounted to a virtual acceptance, and leave no doubt that the bargain will be concluded.