The King and Queen now not only treated their son with extraordinary severity, and spoke of him in the coarsest possible language, but they treated in like manner all who were suspected of aiding and counselling him. Their wrath was especially directed against Lord Carteret, who had at first deceived them. That noble lord censured, in their hearing, a course of conduct in the prince which he had himself suggested, and, in the hearing of the heir-apparent, never failed to praise. When their Majesties discovered this double-dealing, and that an attempt was being made to convince the people that in the matter of the birth of the princess royal, the Queen alone was to blame for all the disagreeable incidents attending it, their anger was extreme. The feeling for Lord Carteret was shown when Lord Hervey one day spoke of him with some commiseration--his son having run away from school, and there being no intelligence of him, except that he had formed a very improper marriage. ‘Why do you pity him?’ said the King to Lord Hervey: ‘I think it is a very just punishment, that, while he is acting the villainous part he does in debauching the minds of other people’s children, he should feel a little what it is to have an undutiful puppy of a son himself!’ Fierce, indeed, was the family feud, and undignified as fierce. The Princess Amelia is said to have taken as double-sided a line of conduct as Lord Carteret himself; for which she incurred the ill-will of both parties. The prince declared not only that he never would trust her again, but that, should he ever be reconciled with the King and Queen, his first care should be to inform them that she had never said so much harm of him to them as she had of them to him. The Princess Caroline was the more fierce partisan of the mother whom she loved, from the fact that she saw how her brother was endeavouring to direct the public feeling against the Queen. She was, however, as little dignified in her fierceness as the rest of her family. On one occasion, as Desnoyers, the dancing-master, had concluded his lesson to the young princesses, and was about to return to the prince, who made of him a constant companion, the Princess Caroline bade him inform his patron, if the latter should ever ask him what was thought of his conduct by her, that it was her opinion that he and all who were with him, except the Princess of Wales, deserved hanging. Desnoyers delivered the message, with the assurances of respect given by one who acquits himself of a disagreeable commission to one whom he regards. ‘How did the prince take it?’ asked Caroline, when next Desnoyers appeared at Hampton Court. ‘Well, madam,’ said the dancing-master, ‘he first spat in the fire, and then observed, “Ah, ah! Desnoyers; you know the way of that Caroline. That is just like her. She is always like that!”’ ‘Well, M. Desnoyers,’ remarked the princess, ‘when next you see him again, tell him that I think his observation is as foolish as his conduct.’