The Queen had to bear the brunt of his ill-humour, and, what was worse, had to endure the fear that her influence over him was on the wane. His manner towards her had completely changed; nothing she could say, or do, was right, in little things or great. Among other trifles he noticed that the Queen had taken some bad pictures out of one of the rooms at Kensington, and replaced them by good ones. The King, who knew nothing of art, and cared less, for the mere sake of finding fault, made this a pretext for thwarting his wife. He peremptorily ordered Lord Hervey to have the new pictures taken away and the old ones replaced. This was impossible, for some of the pictures had been destroyed and others sent to Windsor. But Lord Hervey did not dare tell the King so; he demurred a little and asked the King if he would allow two Vandykes at least to remain, to which George answered: “I suppose you assisted the Queen with your fine advice when she was pulling my house to pieces and spoiling all my furniture: thank God, at least she has left the walls standing! As for the Vandykes, I do not care whether they are changed or no, but for the picture with the dirty frame over the door, and the three nasty little children, I will have them taken away and the old ones restored; I will have it done too to-morrow morning before I go to London, or else I know it will not be done at all.” “Would your Majesty,” said Lord Hervey, “have the gigantic fat Venus restored too?” “Yes, my lord; I am not so nice as your lordship. I like my fat Venus much better than anything you have given me instead of her.” Lord Hervey says that he thought that “if his Majesty had liked his _fat Venus_ as well as he used to do, there would have been none of these disputations”. He told the Queen next morning what had passed. She pretended to laugh but was evidently annoyed, and began to wonder how she could obey the King’s commands. “Whilst they were speaking the King came in, but by good luck, said not one word of the pictures: his Majesty stayed about five minutes in the gallery; snubbed the Queen, who was drinking chocolate, for being always stuffing; the Princess Emily for not hearing him; Princess Caroline for being grown fat; the Duke [of Cumberland] for standing awkwardly; Lord Hervey for not knowing what relation the Prince of Sultzbach was to the Elector Palatine: and then carried the Queen to walk, and be resnubbed, in the garden.”