h he had begun to write and
proclaimed it to be a damned bad pen.

[Sidenote: 1830-37--Beranger's King of Yvetot]

Every day the King was sure to astonish those around him by some breach
of Court conventionality, little or great. He was liable to strong
likings and dislikings, and he took no pains to conceal his sentiments
in either case. He seems to have had an affectionate regard for his
young niece, the Princess Victoria, and a strong dislike to her {119}
mother. The Duchess of Kent would appear to have had no particular
liking for him, and she very much objected to be brought into familiar
association with the sons and daughters of the eccentric sovereign.
Perhaps it is not to William's discredit that he always treated these
children as if they were his legitimate descendants. It was no fault
of theirs if the ceremony of marriage had not preceded their coming
into the world, and the King apparently did not see why even the most
righteous person should feel any objection to their frequent presence.
But one can understand that the Duchess of Kent must have often wished
that the sense of public decorum, which was even already growing up in
English society, should not be shocked by the too frequent reminder
that the King had several children who were not born in wedlock.
Beranger, the once popular French lyric poet, satirized a certain royal
personage, a contemporary of William the Fourth, as the King of Yvetot.
There was a French legend which told of the conditions under which the
descendants of a certain lord of the manor in Brittany had been created
by Clotaire kings of Yvetot. Beranger's monarch is described by him as
one having made little mark of his own in history, who could live very
comfortably without troubling himself about glory, and who liked to be
crowned with a simple cotton nightcap. This monarch, the poet tells
us, could enjoy his four meals a day, and liked very often to lift his
glass to his lips.

There are many reasons, we are told, why some of his subjects might
have called him a father to his people, but the name was not applied by
the poet in the ordinary metaphorical sense of the word. He never
desired to trouble his neighbors, and never disturbed his mind with any
projects for the increase of his dominions, and, like a true model to
all potentates, found his ambition quite satisfied in the indulgence of
his own pleasures while desiring as little as possible to interfere
with the pasti