The prince, attired, according to the hour, in nightgown and cap, met his august mother as she approached his apartments, and kissed her hand and cheek, according to the mode of his country and times. He then entered garrulously into details that would have shocked the delicacy of a monthly nurse; but, as Caroline remarked, she knew a good many of them to be ‘lies.’ She was cold and reserved to the prince; but when she approached the bedside of the princess, she spoke to her gently and kindly--womanly, in short; and concluded by expressing a fear that her royal highness had suffered extremely, and a hope that she was doing well. The lady so sympathisingly addressed, answered, somewhat flippantly, that she had scarcely suffered anything, and that the matter in question was almost nothing at all. Caroline transferred her sympathy from the young mother to her new-born child. The latter was put into the Queen’s arms. She looked upon it silently for a moment, and then exclaimed in French, her ordinary language, ‘May the good God bless you, poor little creature! here you are arrived in a most disagreeable world.’ The wish failed, but the assertion was true. The ‘poor little creature’ was cursed with a long tenure of life, during which she saw her husband deprived of his inheritance, heard of his violent death, and participated in family sorrow, heavy and undeserved. After pitying the daughter thus born, and commiserating the mother who bore her, Caroline was condemned to listen to the too minute details of the journey and its incidents, made by her son. She turned from these to shower her indignation upon those who had aided in the flight, and without whose succour the flight itself could hardly have been accomplished. She directed her indignation by turns upon all; but she let it descend with peculiar heaviness upon Lady Archibald Hamilton, and made it all the more pungent by the comment, that, considering Lady Archibald’s mature age, and her having been the mother of ten children, she had years enough, and experience enough, and offspring enough, to have taught her better things and greater wisdom. To all these winged words, the lady attacked answered no further than by turning to the prince, and repeating, ‘You see, sir!’ as though she would intimate that she had done all she could to turn him from the evil of his ways, and had gained only unmerited reproach for the exercise of a virtue, which, in this case, was likely to be its own and its only reward! The prince was again inclined to become gossiping and offensive in his details, but his royal mother cut him short by bidding him get to bed; and with this message by way of farewell, she left the room, descended the staircase, crossed the court on foot, and proceeded to Lord Hervey’s apartments, where there awaited her gossip more welcome and very superior chocolate.