ting disclosures made by the vulgar
licentious monarch to his too degraded consort.

In the bitterness of her mortification the queen consulted Lord Hervey
and Sir Robert as to the possibility of her losing her influence, should
she resent the king's delay in returning. They agreed, that her taking
the '_fiere_ turn' would ruin her with her royal consort; Sir Robert
adding, that if he had a mind to flatter her into her ruin, he might
talk to her as if she were twenty-five, and try to make her imagine that
she could bring the king back by the apprehension of losing her
affection. He said it was now too late in her life to try new methods;
she must persist in the soothing, coaxing, submissive arts which had
been practised with success, and even press his majesty to bring this
woman to England! 'He taught her,' says Lord Hervey, 'this hard lesson
till she _wept_.' Nevertheless, the queen expressed her gratitude to the
minister for his advice. 'My lord,' said Walpole to Hervey, 'she laid
her thanks on me so thick that I found I had gone too far, for I am
never so much afraid of her rebukes as of her commendations.'

Such was the state of affairs between this singular couple.
Nevertheless, the queen, not from attachment to the king, but from the
horror she had of her son's reigning, felt such fears of the prince's
succeeding to the throne as she could hardly express. He would, she was
convinced, do all he could to ruin and injure her in case of his
accession to the throne.

The consolation of such a friend as Lord Hervey can easily be conceived,
when he told her majesty that he had resolved, in case the king had been
lost at sea, to have retired from her service, in order to prevent any
jealousy or irritation that might arise from his supposed influence with
her majesty. The queen stopped him short, and said, 'No, my lord, I
should never have suffered that; you are one of the greatest pleasures
of my life. But did I love you less than I do, or less like to have you
about me, I should look upon the suffering you to be taken from me as
such a meanness and baseness that you should not have stirred an inch
from me. You,' she added, 'should have gone with me to Somerset House;'
(which was hers in case of the king's death). She then told him she
should have begged Sir Robert Walpole on her knees not to have sent in
his resignation.

The animosity of the Prince of Wales to Lord Hervey augmented, there can
be no doubt, his unnat