For I verily believe that what has happened, although it came upon me like coup de tonnerre, and has given me a great deal of bile, and my stomach I find weakened from that cause, more than from any other,—­for I’m more and more abstemious every day,—­yet I now see that all will end well, and that in the meantime neither you (n)or Lady C(arlisle) will make yourselves uneasy by placing things before you in a wrong light.

I will speak to Ridley when I go to town, but scolding increases my bile, and so to avoid it I sent that coachman who had like to have destroyed me this day sevennight out of my sight, and his horses, without seeing him.

You say that C(harles) will receive four or five thousand from Lord S(tavordale?) upon the same account.  Je le crois, and others will soon after receive it from him, but I am afraid not you.  You may be sure that he said nothing to me of that; he does not talk of his resources to me, except that of his Administration, which you will be so just to me as to recollect that I never gave any credit to, because he knows how I desire that those resources may be applied.  On the contrary, when I spoke to him the other day about your demand, I was answered only with an elevation de ses epaules et une grimace dont je fus tant soit feu pique.  But it is so.  I shall say no more to him upon that or any other subject than I can help.  La coupe de son esprit, quelque brillante quelle puisse etre, n’est pas telle qui me charme et luisera par la suite pour le mains inutile.

I am now going in my chaise to dine at Mr. Digby’s, ou cette branche de la famille ne sera pas traitee avec beaucoup de management; and first I am going to write a letter to my Lord Chancellor to thank him for a living which he has given to a friend of mine at Gloucester, accompanied with the most obliging letter to me in the world.  This and yours have put me to-day in very good humour.  We had an assembly last night at Mrs. Craufurd’s for Lady Cowper, Lady Harrington, Lady H. Vernon, &c., and Mie Mie was permitted to sit up till nine.  She wanted to see “an sembelly,” as she calls it, and was mightily pleased. . . .

(122) Thomas Townshend (1733-1800), afterward first Viscount Sydney, was Selwyn’s nephew.  He was Secretary of War in 1782, and in 1783 Secretary of State, when he initiated the policy of sending convicts beyond the seas as colonists.  Sydney in Australia was named after him.  His second daughter married the second Earl of Chatham, and his fourth daughter married the fourth Duke of Buccleugh—­“the beautiful, the kind, the affectionate, and generous Duchess” of Sir Walter Scott.

(123) A joking allusion to one of his friends.