The Queen's relations with the King were now uniformly friendly, and he seemed quite content to leave authority in her hands. In return she strove to humour him, and even stooped to gratify some of his most absurd whims. It has already been stated that the imbecile Christian had a weakness for seeing women in men's attire; "Catherine of the Gaiters" captivated him most when she donned the uniform of an officer in his service, and the complaisance of the former mistress on this point was at least explicable. But Matilda was his wife and not his mistress, his Queen and not his fancy of an hour, yet she did not hesitate to array herself in male attire to please her husband, at the suggestion of her lover. It may be, too, that she wished to imitate in this, as in other things, the Empress of Russia, Catherine the Great, who frequently wore uniforms and rode _en homme_. However this may be, Matilda adopted a riding-habit made like that of a man, and rode astride. The Queen often went out hunting with Struensee, or rode by his side through the city, in this extraordinary attire. She wore a dove-colour beaver hat with a deep gold band and tassels, a long scarlet coat, faced with gold, a buff, gold-laced waistcoat, a frilled shirt with a lace kerchief, buckskin small-clothes and spurs. She had other riding-habits of different designs, but this was the one in which she most frequently appeared in public. She was always splendidly mounted and rode fearlessly. On horseback she looked a Diana, but when she dismounted she did not appear to the same advantage, for the riding-habit made her seem shorter than she really was, and she already showed a tendency to stoutness, which the small-clothes did not minimise. The Queen, however, was so enamoured of her male attire that she frequently walked about the palace all day in it, to the offence of many and the derision of others.[122] [122] The Queen set the fashion to ride in male attire, and it soon became the custom among the ladies of Copenhagen. Keith wrote a year later: "An abominable riding-habit, with black slouched hat, has been almost universally introduced here, which gives every woman an air of an awkward postilion, and all the time I have been in Denmark I have never seen the Queen out in any other garb".--_Memoirs._