La Reine des Français fut chargée par le Roi de faire agréer le mariage du Duc de Montpensier à la Reine Victoire: mais elle n’y a pas réussi. S. M. Britannique en exprima rondement son opinion à Louis Philippe, qui lui fit répondre par la Reine des Belges. Les intrigants, qui ne manquent pas plus dans ce pays-ci que dans les autres, tâchent de faire leur mieux—et je crois avec quelque succès—pour faire changer de direction à cette indignation qui du Roi paraît à présent se tourner en partie contre M. Guizot.
Cette lettre, que j’espère vous comprendrez malgré mon Français, vous sera remise par un ami auquel je puis me fier. _Ne vous fiez pas à votre poste._ Répondez-moi s’il vous plaît, que l’Ambassade d’Angleterre envoie votre lettre, pour moi, sous convert, à Lord Normanby lui-même, qui n’a pas d’idée du sujet de notre correspondance, mais qui, me connaissant personnellement, voudra bien, je n’en doute pas, avoir la bonté de me la faire parvenir.
Dites-moi bien franchement ce que vous pensez de tout ceci, et soyez certain que je ne manquerai pas de vous faire connaître ce que j’apprendrai d’important relativement à cette malheureuse affaire.
Adieu, mon cher ami; croyez-moi toujours. A. PANIZZI.”
The plot within a plot, in favour of Prince Leopold, caused Guizot much alarm and discomfort. The place of its origin he took to be Lisbon. It was, he conceived, if not strongly backed by British influence, at least virtually, though passively, supported by the English Cabinet. In this respect, looking on him as one who was likely to gauge the diplomacy of others by his own measure, and, moreover, as being moved by the independent, and, it must be confessed, imprudent line taken at the time by the British Minister at Madrid, he need not be too harshly judged.
Panizzi’s theory, however, as to Queen Christina’s part in the affair, seems to go a little too far. To suppose her to have been the direct agent of Louis-Philippe in so ingenious a plot, and to be employed simply in carrying out his designs, is to impute even too much cunning and iniquity to the King of the French (who, it must be borne in mind, afterwards denied categorically any complicity in the matter), and to give too little credit for independence of character to the Queen Dowager. There are many reasons why Christina, a born _intrigante_, at a distance from Paris, and in her own country, finding that she had, for a time at least, the game in her own hands, should have been inclined to play it in her own way, give it an independent turn, and, at the same time, provide against chances of failure, without laying herself open afterwards to the charge of rashly deviating from the course which she had really come to Spain to follow. It requires no great stretch of imagination to conceive any amount of underhand dealing on the part of the principal actors in the _Spanish Marriages_; but we are disposed, after all, to take for truth what Guizot himself says in his “Mémoires,” of this episode of the intrigue, or that which, considering his position, may be accepted as pretty much the same thing, what he firmly believed to be the truth. Of course his wrath may have been simulated, and his joy at perceiving additional advantages in the counterplot well concealed; but that either he or his master directly instigated it, may well be doubted.