Notwithstanding the above story, the King dined with the Duke of Cumberland at Kew yesterday. I went yesterday to the sale of the late King's wardrobe, which was numerous enough to fill Monmouth Street, and sufficiently various and splendid for the wardrobe of Drury Lane. He hardly ever gave away anything except his linen, which was distributed every year. These clothes are the perquisite of his pages, and will fetch a pretty sum. There are all the coats he has ever had for fifty years, 300 whips, canes without number, every sort of uniform, the costumes of all the orders in Europe, splendid furs, pelisses, hunting-coats and breeches, and among other things a dozen pair of corduroy breeches he had made to hunt in when Don Miguel was here. His profusion in these articles was unbounded, because he never paid for them, and his memory was so accurate that one of his pages told me he recollected every article of dress, no matter how old, and that they were always liable to be called on to produce some particular coat or other article of apparel of years gone by. It is difficult to say whether in great or little things that man was most odious and contemptible.
Nothing from France yesterday but the most absurd reports.
Yesterday morning at a Council; all the Ministers, and the Duke of Rutland, Lords Somers, Rosslyn, and Gower to be sworn Lieutenants. Talked about France with Sir G. Murray, who was silly enough to express his disappointment that things promised to be soon and quietly settled, and hoped the King would have assembled an army and fought for it. Afterwards a levee. While the Queen was in the closet they brought her word that Charles X. was at Cherbourg, and had sent for leave to come here; but nobody knew yesterday if this was true or not. In the afternoon I met Vaudreuil, and had a long conversation with him on the state of things. He said, 'My family has been twice ruined by these cursed Bourbons, and I will be damned if they shall a third time;' that he had long foreseen the inevitable tendency of Polignac's determination, ever since he was here, when he had surrounded himself with low agents and would admit no gentleman into his confidence; one of his _affidés_ was a man of the name of Carrier, a relation of the famous Carrier de Nantes. Vaudreuil's father-in-law had consulted him many months ago what to do with £300,000 which he had in the French funds, and he advised him to sell it out and put it in his drawer, which he did, sacrificing the interest for that time. He had hitherto done nothing, been near none of the Ministers, feeling that he could say nothing to them; no communication had been made to him, but whenever any should be he intended to reply to it. Laval ran away just in time, and Vaudreuil was so provoked at his evasion that he sent after him to say that in such important circumstances he could not take upon himself to act without his Ambassador's instructions. No answer of course. He thinks that if this had not taken place a few years must have terminated the reign of the Bourbons, and that it is only the difference between sudden and lingering death; that when he was at Paris he had seen the dissatisfaction of the young officers in the Guards, who were all Liberal; and with these sentiments, what a condition they must have been in when called upon to charge and fire on the people while secretly approving of their conduct, 'entre leurs devoirs de citoyens et de militaires!'