Page:Life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria (IA lifeofhermajesty01fawc).pdf/31

Rh more vigor than delicacy the hope that he might live nine months longer, so that the Princess might attain her majority, and the regency of the Duchess never come into operation. He referred to the Duchess as "a person now near me who is surrounded by evil advisers, and who is herself incompetent to act with propriety in the station in which she would be placed." A great deal more in the same style followed; "an awful philippic," Greville calls it, 'uttered with a loud voice and excited manner." The King's animosity against the Duchess was extended to, and may perhaps have been provoked by, her brother. He had given offence by calling on Queen Caroline after the conclusion of the evidence against her in the House of Lords. He appears himself to have thought the action required an excuse, and says, "But how abandon entirely the mother of Princess Charlotte, who, though she knew her mother well, loved her very much?" George IV. was furious, and never forgave his son-in-law. William IV. shared his brother's sentiments in regard to Leopold, and invariably treated him with coldness, and sometimes with rudeness that amounted to brutality. After he had become King of the Belgians, Leopold visited William IV. at Windsor, and during dinner made an innocent request for water. The King asked, "What's that you are drinking, sir?" "Water, sir." "God d it!" rejoined the other King, "why don't you drink wine? I never allow any one to drink water at my table." The King of the Belgians must have felt like a man living among wild beasts, and it is not surprising to read that he did not sleep at Windsor that night, but went away in the evening. There was not a subject on which they agreed. William IV. was a Tory of the Tories; Prince Leopold was a Whig. King William's chief political interest was the preservation