Madame de Plessen was pursued with relentless severity, and two days after her dismissal from the Danish court she was ordered to quit the kingdom. She withdrew to Hanoverian territory, and finally settled at Celle. She was forbidden to hold any communication with her former mistress, but it is probable that she managed to evade this order. The separation was a bitter grief both to the Queen and her chief lady. Despite her domineering disposition and want of tact, Madame de Plessen dearly loved her young mistress, and would have died, had it been necessary, for her sake. She was by nature hard and undemonstrative, but the helpless little Queen had found a tender spot in her heart, and the maternal love she felt for her mistress was all the more fierce because of its concentration; in shielding her from the contamination of the court she was like a tigress guarding her young. Perhaps it was the very fierceness of her devotion which led her into errors of judgment, but great though these were, if she had avoided political intrigue, she might have retained her place. To Matilda the loss of this good woman, for she was a good woman despite her unamiable qualities, was irreparable. Surrounded as she was by spies and enemies, beset by perils and temptations, she knew that she had in her chief lady a disinterested friend, and she clung to her all the more because she had not strength of herself to stand alone. Had Madame de Plessen remained with the Queen, the errors and follies of after years would never have been committed. In the dangerous path Matilda had to tread, beset by pitfalls on every side, she needed some one who would guide her stumbling feet, and lead her in the way she should go. Queen Matilda was not allowed much time to indulge in her grief, for within ten days of Madame de Plessen's dismissal she had to hold a court, at which she received the congratulations of the foreign ministers and Danish nobility on the birth of her son. The day was observed as a general holiday, and in the evening there was a banquet and ball at the Christiansborg Palace. If she wrote to England to complain of the hard treatment she had suffered in thus being deprived of one in whom she placed confidence, she probably received little comfort from her brother. We find Lord Weymouth writing to Gunning before Madame de Plessen's dismissal: "The King would not be sorry to hear of her removal,"[89] and after it: "I assure you that the King is thoroughly sensible of the zealous and dutiful motives which engaged you to see with so much concern the dangerous tendency of that lady's influence".[90] [89] Lord Weymouth's despatch to Gunning, March 18, 1768. [90] _Ibid._, May 4, 1768.