This time he returned to his ‘old’ wife laden with a fresh sorrow--the memory of a new favourite. He had left his heart with the insinuating Walmoden, and he brought to his superb Caroline nothing but a tribute of ill-humour and spite. He hated more than ever the change from an Electorate where he was so delightfully despotic, to a country where he was only chief magistrate, and where the people, through their representatives, kept a very sharp watch upon him in the execution of his duties. He was accordingly as coarse and evil-disposed towards the circle of his court as he was to her who was the centre of it. He, too, was like one of those pantomime potentates who are for ever in King Cambyses’ vein, and who sweep through the scene in a whirlwind of farcically furious words and of violent acts, or of threats almost as bad as if the menaces had been actually realised. It was observed that his behaviour to Caroline had never been so little tinged with outward respect as now. She bore his ill-humour with admirable patience; and her quiet endurance only the more provoked the petulance of the little and worthless King. He was not only ill-tempered with the mistress of the palace, but was made, or chose to think himself, especially angry at trifling improvements which Caroline had carried into effect in the suburban palace during the temporary absence of its master. The improvements consisted chiefly in removing some worthless pictures and indifferent statues and placing master-pieces in their stead. The King would have all restored to the condition it was in when he had last left the palace; and he treated Lord Hervey as a fool for venturing to defend the Queen’s taste and the changes which had followed the exercise of it. ‘I suppose,’ said the dignified King to the courteous vice-chamberlain, ‘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!’ Lord Hervey asked if he would not allow the two Vandykes which the Queen had substituted for ‘two signposts,’ to remain. George pettishly answered, that he didn’t care whether they were changed or no; ‘but,’ he added, ‘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.’ Lord Hervey next enquired if his Majesty would also have ‘his gigantic fat Venus restored too?’ The King replied that he would, for he liked his fat Venus better than anything which had been put in its place. Upon this Lord Hervey says _he_ fell to thinking ‘that if his Majesty had liked his _fat Venus_ as well as he used to do, there would have been none of these disputations.’