[48] "The late ministry," wrote Gunning after the fall of Bernstorff's Government in 1770, "are said to have neglected no means of presenting all business to His Majesty's youthful eye through the terrifying medium of labour and drudgery. They used many efforts (and at length they succeeded) to inspire him with a thorough distaste for everything but ease and dissipation, with the sole design of maintaining their own power and consequence. They equally diverted his application from civil or military business, the former with a view of managing it themselves, the latter in order to prevent any great exertion of the natural power of an arbitrary government, which without an army is a mere chimæra." (Gunning's despatch, Copenhagen, April 4, 1771.) [Illustration: KING CHRISTIAN VII. _From the Painting by P. Wichman, 1766._] In other ways, too, Christian showed signs of change, not for the better. For a few months after his accession he spent his evenings in the circle of the royal family, with his sisters and stepbrother, the Hereditary Prince Frederick. He by turns visited the two Dowager-Queens, Juliana Maria and Sophia Magdalena. Juliana Maria treated him with great friendliness, and his grandmother, Sophia Magdalena, was genuinely fond of him. But the company of the two dowagers was not lively, and it was made worse by the stiff etiquette that prevailed in their circles. It pleased the King's wayward humour to outrage all these laws of etiquette, and even to descend to the level of practical jokes, sheltering himself against retaliation by his position. On one occasion he blew a cup of scalding tea into a lady's face when she was in the act of drinking it; on another he exposed his august grandmother to derision by powdering her hair with sugar. In addition to the two Dowager-Queens there was another old princess at the Danish court, the King's aunt, Charlotte Amelia, who lived only for religious practices and charity. Even the halo of sanctity which surrounded this royal spinster did not protect her from insult. She was constantly tormented by the King and jeered at before the courtiers. At first Charlotte Amelia treated this insolence as boyish fun, but at last things became so bad that she withdrew from court. Her limit of endurance was reached when one of the King's pages crawled under the dining-table on all fours, disguised as a savage, and nearly frightened her to death. She retired to the Amalienborg and could never be persuaded to return to court. The King's practical joke cost him dear, for the Princess Charlotte Amelia revoked her will, and left her large fortune away from her nephew to the poor.