After the death of the Duke, the Duchess became a fugitive, for the Duchy of Brunswick was in the possession of the French. And accordingly the poor Augusta, at whose birth in St. James’s Palace there had been such scant ceremony and excess of commotion, came now in her old age, and after an absence of forty years, to ask a home at the hearth of the brother who loved her, as she used to say equivocally, as warmly as he _could_ love anything, and of the sister-in-law who, as the poor Duchess knew, regarded her with some dislike, and who was met with the same amount and quality of affection on the part of Augusta of Brunswick. She had, however, little cause to complain, as far as these relatives were concerned. They received her cordially; and, though they gave her no home in the palace in which she was born, they helped her to an humbler home elsewhere, and occasionally lent it cheerfulness by paying her a visit. In the meantime the widowed mother sat at the hearth of her deserted daughter, and though neither of them had sufficient depth of sentiment to bring her affliction touchingly home to the other, each was sufficiently stricken by severity of real sorrow to render her eloquent upon her own misery, if not attentive to the twice-told tale of her companion. Meanwhile, there was pressure of another sort upon the Princess--a pressure of debt, incurred principally by the uncertainty with which she had hitherto been supplied with pecuniary means, and also the want of a controlling treasurer to give warning when expenditure was exceeding probable income. Prudent people find such an officer in themselves; but then the Princess was not a prudent person, and among the things she least understood was the management or the worth of money. She was, however, in 1809, in so embarrassed a situation as to render an application to the King’s ministers necessary, when it was found that her debts exceeded 50,000_l._ A final arrangement was then come to. The Prince and Princess signed a deed of separation. The former consented to pay the debts to the amount of 49,000_l._ on condition of being held non-responsible for any future liabilities incurred by his consort. Her fixed income was settled at 22,000_l._ per annum, under the control of a treasurer, who was to discharge the remaining liabilities out of the present year’s income, and to guard against any other occurring in years to come, if he could.