ing to his report, was
only one thousand ducats--a much greater proof of his economy than his
passion."[118] Among many extraordinary relations and expressions his
letters contained, "there was one in which he desired the queen to
contrive, if she could, that the Prince of Modena, who was to come the
latter end of the year to England, might bring his wife with him; and
the reason he gave for it was, that he heard her Highness was pretty
free of her person, and that he had the greatest inclination imaginable
to pay his addresses to a daughter of the late Regent of France, the
Duke of Orleans--'un plaisir' (for he always wrote in French), 'que je
suis sur, ma chere Caroline, vous serez bien aise de me procurer, quand
je vous dis combien je le souhaite.' Such a request to his wife
respecting a woman he never saw, and during his connection with Madame
Walmoden, speaks much stronger in a bare narrative of the fact, than by
any comment or reflections; and is as incapable of being heightened as
difficult to be credited."[119]

Queen Caroline bore all this without a murmur in order to retain her
political influence with the king. To the power of the queen she
sacrificed the feelings of the woman. With many good qualities and
considerable ability, she shared in the prevailing coarseness. Her son,
the Prince of Wales, was a very disagreeable person. Neither the queen
nor the Princess Caroline "made much ceremony of wishing a hundred
times a day that the prince might drop down dead of an apoplexy--the
queen cursing the hour of his birth, and the Princess Caroline
declaring she grudged him every hour he continued to breathe; and
reproaching Lord Hervey" for ever having believed "the nauseous beast
(those were her words) cared for anybody but his own nauseous
self."[120] The morning after the prince had been ordered to leave the
palace, "the queen, at breakfast, every now and then repeated, 'I hope,
in God, I shall never see him again'; and the king, among many other
paternal _douceurs_ in his valediction to his son, said,'Thank-God,
to-morrow night the puppy will be out of my house.'"[121] "My dear
Lord" said the queen to Hervey, "I will give it to you under my own
hand, if you are in any fear of my relapsing, that my dear first-born
is the greatest ass and the greatest liar and the greatest _canaille_,
and the greatest beast in the whole world, and that I most heartily
wish he was out of it."[122] After the royal family, Sir Rober