The Queen’s greatest triumph was this overcoming of her husband’s personal hatred for Walpole. It could not have been an achievement easy to be accomplished. But her art in effecting such achievements was supreme, and she alone could turn to her own purpose the caprices of a hot-headed man, of whom it has been said, that he was of iron obstinacy, but that he was unlike iron in this, that the hotter he became the more impossible it was to bend him. Caroline found him pliant when she found him cool. But then, too, he was most wary, and it was necessary so to act as to cause every turn which she compelled him to make appear to himself as if it were the result of his own unbiassed volition. Supremely able as Caroline was, she could not, however, always conceal her emotion. Thus, at this very period of the agitation of the Excise bill, on being told, at one of her evening drawing-rooms, of the difficulties and dangers which beset the path of the government, she burst into tears, became unusually excited, and finally affecting, and perhaps feeling, headache and vapours, she broke up her quadrille party, and betrayed in her outward manner an apparent conviction of impending calamity. She evinced the same weakness on being told, on a subsequent evening, that Walpole was in a majority of only seventeen. Such a small majority she felt was a defeat; and, on this occasion, she again burst into tears, and for the first time expressed a fear that the court _must_ give way! The sovereign was, at the same time, as strong within her as the woman; and when she heard of the subordinate holders of government posts voting against the minister or declining to vote with him, she bitterly denounced them, exclaiming, that they who refused to march with their leader were as guilty as they who openly deserted, and that both merited condign punishment.[11] The King on this occasion was as excited as his consort, but he manifested his feelings in a different way. He made Lord Hervey repeat the names of those who thwarted the views of the crown, and he grunted forth an angry commentary at each name. ‘Lord John Cavendish,’ began Hervey. ‘_A fool!_’ snorted the King. ‘Lord Charles Cavendish.’ ‘_Half mad!_’ ‘Sir William Lowther.’ ‘_A whimsical fellow!_’ ‘Sir Thomas Prendergast.’ ‘_An Irish blockhead!_’ ‘Lord Tyrconnel.’ ‘_A puppy_,’ said George, ‘who never votes twice _on the same side_!’ On the other hand, the populace made _their_ comment on the proceedings of the court. It was rendered in a highly popular way, and with much significancy. In the city of London, for instance, the mob hung in effigy Sir Robert Walpole and a _fat woman_. The male figure was duly ticketed. The female effigy was well understood to mean the Queen.