In concluding this chapter, it may be stated that when Frederick was about to bring forward the question of his revenue, the Queen would fain have had an interview with the son she alternately despised and feared, to persuade him against pursuing this measure--the carrying out of which she dreaded as prejudicial to the King’s health in his present enfeebled state. Caroline, however, would not see her son, for the reason, as the mother alleged, that he was such an incorrigible liar that he was capable of making any mendacious report of the interview, even of her designing to murder him. She had, in an interview with him, at the time of the agitation connected with the Excise bill, been compelled to place the Princess Caroline, concealed, within hearing, that she might be a witness in case of the prince, her brother, misrepresenting what had really taken place. When the King learned the prince’s intentions, he took the matter much more coolly than the Queen. Several messengers, however, passed between the principal parties, but nothing was done in the way of turning the prince from his purpose. It was an innocent purpose enough, indeed, as he represented it. The parliament had entrusted to the King a certain annual sum for the prince’s use. The King and Queen did not so understand it, and he simply applied to parliament to solicit that august body to put an interpretation on its own act. The supposed debilitated condition of the King’s health gave increased hopes to the prince’s party. The Queen, therefore, induced him to hold _levées_ and appear more frequently in public. His improvement in health and good humour was a matter of disappointment to those who wished him dying, and feared to see him grow popular. The animosity of the Queen and her daughter, Caroline, against the Prince of Wales was ferocious.[32] The mother cursed the day on which she had borne the son who was for ever destroying her peace, and would end, she said, by destroying her life. There was no opprobrious epithet which she did not cast at him; and they who surrounded the Queen and princess had the honour of daily hearing them hope that God would strike the son and brother dead with apoplexy. Such enmity seems incredible. The gentle Princess Caroline’s gentlest name for her brother was ‘that nauseous beast;’ and in running over the catalogue of crimes of which she declared him capable, if not actually guilty, she did not hesitate to say that he was capable of murdering even those whom he caressed. Never was family circle so cursed by dissension as this royal circle; in which the parents hated the son, the son the parents; the parents deceived one another, the husband betrayed the wife, the wife deluded the husband, the children were at mutual antagonism, and truth was a stranger to all. CHAPTER VII. THE BIRTH OF AN HEIRESS.