nce, or _ennui_ me with his
wife's, of an evening? I felt something here in my throat that swelled
and half-choked me.'

Poor Queen Caroline! with such a son, and such a husband, she must have
been possessed of a more than usual share of German imperturbability to
sustain her cheerfulness, writhing, as she often was, under the pangs of
a long-concealed disorder, of which eventually she died. Even on the
occasion of the king's return in time to spend his birthday in England,
the queen's temper had been sorely tried. Nothing had ever vexed her
more than the king's admiration for Amelia Sophia Walmoden, who, after
the death of Caroline, was created Countess of Yarmouth. Madame Walmoden
had been a reigning belle among the married women at Hanover, when
George II. visited that country in 1735. Not that her majesty's
affections were wounded; it was her pride that was hurt by the idea that
people would think that this Hanoverian lady had more influence than she
had. In other respects the king's absence was a relief: she had the
_eclat_ of the regency; she had the comfort of having the hours which
her royal torment decreed were to be passed in amusing his dulness, to
herself; she was free from his 'quotidian sallies of temper, which,' as
Lord Hervey relates, 'let it be charged by what hand it would, used
always to discharge its hottest fire, on some pretence or other, upon
her.'

It is quite true that from the first dawn of his preference for Madame
Walmoden, the king wrote circumstantial letters of fifty or sixty pages
to the queen, informing her of every stage of the affair; the queen, in
reply, saying that she was only _one_ woman, and an old woman, and
adding, 'that he might love _more and younger women_.' In return, the
king wrote, 'You must love the Walmoden, for she loves _you_;' a civil
insult, which he accompanied with so minute a description of his new
favourite, that the queen, had she been a painter, might have drawn her
portrait at a hundred miles' distance.

The queen, subservient as she seemed, felt the humiliation. Such was the
debased nature of George II. that he not only wrote letters unworthy of
a man to write, and unfit for a woman to read, to his wife, but he
desired her to show them to Sir Robert Walpole. He used to 'tag several
paragraphs,' as Lord Hervey expresses it, with these words, '_Montrez
ceci, et consultez la-dessus de gros homme_,' meaning Sir Robert. But
this was only a portion of the disgus