Since Madame de Plessen had left the court Matilda had no one to whom she could talk freely, nor, except her sister Augusta of Brunswick, had she any one to whom she could write without restraint. Augusta had her own troubles too, but she kept a warm corner in her heart for her youngest sister, and throughout life remained her truest and staunchest friend. But, at best, letter-writing is a poor substitute for personal converse, and at this time Matilda was much alone. The young Queen must have often felt friendless and depressed as she paced the terraces of Frederiksborg or looked down from the windows of her apartments into the green water which lapped the castle walls, or gazed out on the clear northern night, and watched the moonlight play on the towers and pinnacles of the palace. Sometimes of a morning she would wander forth to the beech woods beyond the gardens. These beeches, mighty with age, are now, as they were then, one of the features of Frederiksborg. They are always beautiful--beautiful in spring, with their satin-smooth trunks, and branches still leafless, but tipped with brown spikes flushed with purple, and already bursting to disclose the woolly buds of silver within; beautiful in summer, when the pale green leaves form a shimmering canopy overhead; beautiful when the golden hues of autumn mingle with the russet-brown of the cones; beautiful even in winter, when the leafless branches stretch like lacework against the leaden hues of the sky, and the shrill winds from the Baltic whistle through them, and the ground beneath is carpeted with husks of their lavish fruit. Matilda grew to love these beech woods greatly, and even to-day they are associated with her name. The Queen had one consolation in her loneliness which was not hers when she came to Denmark-- she had her son, and found much happiness in him, for the maternal instinct was always strong in her. She could no longer feel a stranger and an alien in a country over which her son would, under Providence, one day rule; she was not merely the King's wife, but the mother of the future King of Denmark. The Crown Prince was at first sickly and ailing, but when the Queen went to Frederiksborg, in defiance of court etiquette, she took the infant under her immediate care, and kept him with her as much as possible. During the summer, under his mother's watchful love, the little Prince, whose life was so precious to the Danish nation, grew much stronger. The English envoy mentions an audience he had with the Queen at Frederiksborg soon after her arrival there, and adds: "The Prince Royal, whom her Majesty was pleased to allow me to see, is greatly grown since his removal to the country. The resemblance between his Highness and the King's (our royal Master's) family is striking to all those who have had the honour of seeing him."[110] [110] Gunning's despatch, Copenhagen, July 9, 1768. [Illustration: THE PALACE OF FREDERIKSBORG, FROM THE GARDEN TERRACE.