_January 19th._--Went last night to the Tuileries; the King was very civil, but did not talk to me on any subject. We were there only twenty minutes. I saw all the Princesses, the Duchesse de Montpensier decidedly the best; she is a pretty, plump little thing, and looks three or four years older than she is. The Duchesse d'OrlÈans is still in mourning. The King looks very well, and is grossly caricatured by 'Punch;' he is a very good-looking old gentleman, and seems to have many years of life in him still. Normanby saw Guizot on Sunday about the affairs of the Plate, when he took the opportunity to speak to him about his second extract (from the despatch which was not communicated to him); he made the same sort of excuse as for the other, and reminded him that he had taken the words down in pencil. Went last night to a ball at the Duchesse de Galiera's, where I met Francis Baring,[7] who told me a good deal about French politics. He says Thiers is quite out of the question, and that his own errors and the schism in his party hare demolished him. Billault and Dufaure are making a second opposition. He thinks Guizot has more to fear from the effects of the very grave financial embarrassment which exists, and that if he got the country into any political difficulty in the midst of it he might be sacrificed, but MolÈ is a man without courage; the majority is the King's majority on the whole, but still Guizot has many followers and is not without power. It would not, therefore, be quite so simple and easy to dismiss Guizot unless some good opportunity presented itself. Everybody here will support the Government in its present contest with us. He said he should not dare to speak a contrary language to his wife, who would tear both his eyes out if he did. He thinks we were right to decline joint operation in the affair of Cracow, but that it is an enormous blunder to make so much of the Treaty of Utrecht; that it would have been wise to have made a protest, the more vague and general the better, but reserving to ourselves to take any course we thought fit in respect to Spanish marriages and successions, keeping all treaties and laws bearing on the subject in reserve, to be used or not according to our discretion. This is what I have always thought: the Treaty of Utrecht, the renunciations, the laws of Spain, and the other treaties between Spain and Austria furnish materials for a very good argument such as an astute counsel might turn to excellent account; but Palmerston has made the Treaty so prominent, and has been so decisive and peremptory, that he has got into a position where he can neither advance without danger nor recede without discredit. I saw the other day his protest at Madrid against the marriage in which he declared that England would _never_ acknowledge the issue of the Duchesse de Montpensier as heirs to the crown of Spain.