Under an appearance of, at least, fair health, Queen Caroline may be said to have been gradually decaying for years. Her pride and her courage would not, however, allow of this being seen; and when she rose, as was her custom, to curtsey to the King, not even George himself was aware of the pain the effort cost her. Sir Robert Walpole was long aware that she suffered greatly from some secret malady, and it was not till after a long period of observation that he succeeded in discovering her Majesty’s secret. He was often closeted with her, arranging business that they were afterwards to nominally transact in presence of the King, and to settle, as _he_ imagined, according to _his_ will and pleasure. It was on some such occasion that Sir Robert made the discovery in question. The minister’s wife had just died; she was about the same age as Caroline, and the Queen put to the minister such close, physical questions, and adverted so frequently to the subject of rupture, of which Sir Robert’s wife did not die, that the minister at once came to the conclusion that her Majesty was herself suffering from that complaint.[40] This was the case: but the fact was only known to the King himself, her German nurse (Mrs. Mailborne), and one other person. A curious scene often occurred in her dressing-room and the adjoining apartment. During the process of the morning toilette, prayers were read in the outer room by her Majesty’s chaplain, the latter kneeling the while beneath the painting of a nude Venus--which, as Dr. Madox, a royal chaplain on service, once observed, was a ‘very proper altar-piece.’ On these occasions, Walpole tells us that, ‘to prevent all suspicion, her Majesty would frequently stand some minutes in her shift, talking to her ladies, and, though labouring with so dangerous a complaint, she made it so invariable a rule never to refuse a desire of the King, that every morning, at Richmond, she walked several miles with him; and more than once, when she had the gout in her foot, she dipped her whole leg in cold water to be ready to attend him. The pain, her bulk, and the exercise, threw her into such fits of perspiration as routed the gout; but those exertions hastened the crisis of her distemper.’