Scarce six months of the twelve had elapsed, during which his subjects were to mourn for him, when the king cast off gloom and fond remembrance by marrying the Princess Juliana Maria of Wolfenbüttel. This princess, the youngest of six daughters, had been educated so carefully as to enjoy the reputation of being one of the most accomplished, princely daughters of the time, while the fame of her beauty equalled that of her other brilliant qualities. Her eldest and second sisters were married respectively to Frederick the Great, and Prince Augustus William, the heir presumptive to the Prussian throne. But this step-mother was less able to play the part of a true mother to the bereaved royal children, because she was the exact opposite of the departed queen in disposition. According to the author of "Northern Courts,"[24] the new queen was a little more than kin and less than kind. She hated the late queen's children, and, if she had dared, would have sent them to follow their mother to the grave. At an early age, in her father's petty court, she was a great dabbler in political intrigues; in her temper, she was sullen, cruel, and vindictive; extremely penurious, forgetful of benefits, but never failing to avenge an injury tenfold; above all, a most profound dissembler, and able to wear a smile on her face and show all manner of civilities to the person most mortally hated, and whose destruction, at that very moment, she might be planning. After giving birth to a weak, deformed son, who offered a striking contrast to Louisa's fair and white-haired boy, there is a dark rumour that Juliana Maria so far gave way to her fury as to attempt to remove the future heir to the throne by poison. The story is told with much circumstantiality in the "Northern Courts," but we need not dwell on the painful details. Suffice it for our purpose to say, that the design was detected by Christian's faithful Norwegian nurse, and the secret was revealed to the omnipotent minister, Count Moltke. The affair, of course, reached the king's ears, whose feelings, from this moment, revolted against his guilty consort. Unfortunately, for the sake of drowning his sorrow, he fell into habits of intoxication, and the government entirely passed into the hands of Count Moltke, who was generally known in public by the ironical title of "King Moltke."