The warning was not unfounded. There are good grounds for believing that Christian, during the period between his engagement and marriage, had been entangled in other snares. It could hardly have been otherwise, when we bear in mind the deleterious influences brought to bear on him, and the temptations to which a boy who had been so severely educated was exposed, when he found himself his own master at the unripe age of seventeen. I do not hesitate to assert that the worst influences had been at work on the young king's mind and senses, and the following confirms my assertion. We have seen that the marriage took place on November 8, and on November 25, Ogier, the sharp-sighted French envoy at Copenhagen, considered himself justified in reporting to Paris:--"The princess has produced hardly any impression on the king's heart, and had she been even more amiable, she would have experienced the same fate. For, how could she please a man who most seriously believes that it is not fashionable (n'est pas du bon air) for a husband to love his wife?" A pretty specimen, forsooth, of the effect of the mistress doctrine which was omnipotent in the eighteenth century! We see that poor Christian, in a few short months, had made frightfully rapid progress in the corruption of his age. As Reverdil tells us, with a groan, "a royal person in his bed appeared to him rather an object of respect than of love."[43] The queen's household had been previously appointed, and Frau von Plessen, daughter of Privy Councillor von Berkentin, was selected as grand mistress so far back as August. The choice was a most unfortunate one, for this lady, although respectable, was austere, haughty, and decidedly in opposition.[44] Her apartments were twice a week the meeting-place of all the malcontents, and the ministers and old courtiers, after dining with the king, went there to lament over the backslidings and corrupt society of the young people by whom the king was surrounded. Still, this choice, though unwise, was not so pernicious as that of Fräulein von Eyben as lady in waiting. The good understanding among the other members of the royal family did not at first appear to be disturbed by the king's marriage. It is true that Sophia Magdalena, who was sixty-six years of age, and whose heart was distracted between fear of God and ambition, could not thoroughly sympathise with the girlish Caroline Matilda, but it is probable that she was the more willing to forgive her her youth and beauty, because she did not apprehend any political rival in her.