On the present occasion, however, she succeeded in at least patching up a truce; her influence over the weaker nature of the King was at this time, as it always had been and in fact continued to the day of her death, boundless. She could mould him in those soft white hands of hers, of which she was no doubt naturally proud, into any form she chose, and with the Prince she took the business line of telling him he would gain nothing by trying to force the King’s hand through Parliament. But at the same time she induced George to advance his son a sum of money with which to liquidate his most pressing debts, and so with this little sacrifice on the King’s part, the matter ended,--for the time. FOOTNOTES: [29] He was Master of St. Catherine in the Tower, and had stood in two Parliaments as member for Dover. CHAPTER XII. A CHILD BRIDE. Just about this time (1735), a very important event indeed occurred; the King took a new mistress! He made his triennial visit to Hanover this year, and became smitten with the charms of a young German lady named Walmoden. This middle-aged Don Juan--he was getting on, he was fifty-two--induced this estimable lady to leave her husband for the trifling consideration of a thousand ducats. Madame Walmoden was a great niece of the Countess von Platen who had been one of the mistresses of George the First, and consequently had a good strain of the courtesan in her blood before she disposed of herself for the aforesaid thousand ducats. Little George at once wrote off to his wife in England and told her all about it, just as if he had bought a new horse; he did not scruple to describe the person of his new purchase to his wife, minutely. He even solicited his wife’s affection for her! A curious race these Hanoverian Kings! Further, George did not scamp the details of his amour in his letters to his wife, which were immensely long and always written in French, which he apparently considered a language more fitted for descriptions of love affairs; _his_ sort of love affairs at any rate. This is a sample of one of his letters written concerning the inviting to England by the Queen (which he besought her to contrive) of a certain Princess of Modena, a daughter of a late Regent of France, to whom he had the greatest possible inclination to pay his addresses, particularly because he understood she was not at all particular from whom she received such marks of favour. “Un plaisir,” he wrote, “que je suis sûr, ma chère Caroline, vous serez bien aise de me procurer, quand je vous dis combien je le souhaite!”