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162 determined for the present to keep the office, which, alas! ought to be the last and seems the only object. Rigby will come before dinner to-morrow, and tell you more at large what passed in both conversations, when he complained of your intimating his intention, or giving an opinion for him, which, says he, no man should do for another. I asked if I had not frequently given him my opinion of Lord Granby's intention, and whether he thought I did right or wrong; this was unanswerable, and avoided by going to fresh argument. I told him no longer since than Tuesday, I thought myself sure from his own mouth he would quit now or at Midsummer at farthest, and that I was, by his request, hurrying warrants that he might do so. In short, my dear Lord, he can't think of retiring from business, and deceived both himself and us, if the present state of his mind can be reasoned upon, when he talked of ending his political career. I believe he proposes going to the King on Monday, and assuring him he never had a thought of resigning the Pay Office. How this must hurt him in the closet after all that has happened, I grieve to think, and would give the world he could be persuaded to go out with that credit we have so long laboured to gain him."

The interview with the King took place on Monday the 28th, when "Fox behaved with great sourness, and the King with great dignity as regarded Lord Shelburne." The King evidently feared to let his discontented Minister stay in the House of Commons, and Fox used that fear to make the King declare his resignation of the Pay Office should "be optional." But though he obtained his object he still continued to vilify Shelburne. "As every mortification I meet with," he wrote to Calcraft, "and they are many, is the consequence of Lord Shelburne's conduct, I believe it were better we should have no conversation together on the matter. I do not mean that he intended what has happened, it may be quite the contrary, but