_February 20th._--Matters get blacker and blacker at Paris, and Normanby has got himself into a deplorable fix from which at present there seems to be no exit. I have letter upon letter on the subject, all full of grief and confusion. Normanby himself writes to complain of the harm the 'Times' has done him (a second letter), but seems still unconscious that it is his own precipitancy and Palmerston's violence that have got him into the scrape. The agitation at Paris is extreme, and the whole Embassy now seem frightened and to be recovering (now that it is too late) from their hallucinations about getting rid of Guizot, and their being able to carry everything with a high hand. William Hervey even now writes something like sense; and Howden tells Clarendon the truth, and just what I have been saying all along. Craven writes to me and anticipates nothing but Normanby's return and eventually war. _February 22nd._--On Friday Lord Lansdowne called me into his room, and told me I should be glad to hear that there was a probability of the quarrel at Paris being settled, as the King had undertaken to mediate between the parties. I went up to St. Aulaire directly after, but he had heard nothing of it. He expressed joy, and said it had all along been the only solution he had looked to. He then showed me a letter from Guizot to him, written two days after the debate, in which he said that he had spoken of Normanby with the greatest reserve, and avoided saying anything which could impugn his veracity or the intentional incorrectness of his report. I asked him whether Guizot would have said this to Normanby if he had applied to him, and he said certainly he would, he had no doubt of it. He then told me that a fresh ingredient had been cast into the cauldron from the foolish incident of the invitation to Guizot, and he read me a letter from M. de Cazes with an account of it. Normanby gave a great assembly on the 19th, and amongst the invitations, one was sent _by mistake_ to Guizot. Nothing ought to have been done but to let it alone; but very foolishly they made a great noise about it, and in a manner which was considered personally insulting to Guizot; they proclaimed all over Paris that they never intended to invite him. It had been settled in the first instance that the Ministers and others belonging to the Government should go to this party, and Guizot wished them to go; but after this incident M. de Cazes said it was thought impossible to go, and he believed none would. So much for _gaucherie_ and _maladresse_. [Sidenote: DEFEAT OF THE PROTECTIONISTS.]