Probably this messenger was the only person who had reason to rejoice at the arrival of the Prince of Orange. The Prince was lodged in Somerset House, and many of the nobility went to wait upon him there, hoping by paying him their court to please the King. They little knew that the King and Queen were in their hearts opposed to the match, and had only yielded to it from political exigencies, and the impossibility of finding any other suitable suitor for their daughter. The Queen sent Lord Hervey to Somerset House with orders to come back and tell her “without disguise what sort of hideous animal she was to prepare herself to see”. The Prince was not nearly so bad as he had been painted, for though he was deformed, he had a pleasant and engaging manner. The Queen seemed more interested in the appearance of the future bridegroom than the bride herself, for the Princess Royal, when she heard of the arrival of her lover, continued playing the harpsichord with some of the opera people as though nothing had happened. “For my part,” said the Queen, “I never said the least word to encourage her in this marriage or to dissuade her from it.” The King, too, left the Princess at liberty, but as she was determined to marry some one, and as the Prince, though not a crowned King, was the head of a petty state, she said that she was willing to marry him.[105] The King then remembered his duty as a father, and not too nicely warned his daughter of the Prince’s physical unattractiveness, but she said she was resolved, if he were a baboon, to marry him. “Well, then, marry him,” retorted the King in a huff, “and you’ll have baboon enough I warrant you.” The wedding was arranged to take place immediately after the arrival of the bridegroom elect, but as ill-luck would have it the Prince fell sick of a fever, and for some months lay dangerously ill. During the whole time of his sickness none of the Royal Family went to visit him, or took any notice of him, by command of the King, who wished to inculcate the doctrine that before his marriage to the Princess the Prince of Orange was nobody, and could only become somebody through alliance with the Royal Family. The Prince, though he must have felt this neglect, behaved with great good sense, and as soon as he was able to go out, he went to St. James’s Palace to pay his respects as if nothing had happened. He had an interview with his future bride, and stayed to dinner with the princesses informally. When the King heard of it he was very angry, and forbade them to receive him any more without his permission. The occasion did not arise, for a few days later the Prince of Orange went to Bath for a cure, and did not return to London until a fortnight before his wedding.