There is always something in feminine altercations that is ludicrous as well as painful. Few women know how and where to stay the course of anger; when it once begins to flow, every charm, every grace so fondly prized by the sex, is obliterated, when retort follows retort, and retaliation grows vigorous; and dignity, to assert which the fair sex is oftentimes so valiant, takes its departure immediately we become vociferous in its defence. One evening, in the interregnum between the quarrel concerning the settlement and their final feuds, the Queen, who had lived outwardly on tolerable terms with her sister for some time, “began,” as the Princess Anne expressed it, “to pick quarrels,” upon the sore subject of the annuity, and to intimate that supposing some twenty or thirty thousand pounds were to be taken off the fifty thousand allowed, the Princess, she presumed, could live upon it “as she had done before;” upon which an indecorous altercation ensued.[210] On the following day, Lord Marlborough, after performing his usual duties as lord of the bedchamber, received, through Lord Nottingham, the humiliating intimation that he was dismissed from all his employments, both civil and military, and forbidden the court. This blow is said to have been totally unexpected by the Earl, from whom the King had parted on that very morning in the usual manner.[211] Lord Marlborough received the intelligence communicated by Lord Nottingham with the composure of a superior mind. “He retired,” says one of his biographers, “with the calmness of the old Roman dictator, wishing to be succeeded by a better servant, and by one more concerned for his Highness’s honour.”[212] Of course, innumerable causes for this unlooked for occurrence were started by the public, always curious on such occasions. By some it was said that a letter had been intercepted, which gave rise to suspicions unfavourable to the Earl. By others the disgrace of Marlborough was ascribed to the resentment of Lord Portland, whom Marlborough was in the habit of designating “un homme de bois;”[213] by many, the interference of Marlborough and the Countess in the matter of the settlement was referred to as the cause of his loss of favour and office, without taking into account that it was then two years since that affair, and that Marlborough had been in the mean time so employed and distinguished by the King as to have obtained from the Marquis of Carmarthen the invidious appellation of the “General of favour.” But, whilst it has been allowed that these various causes, severally and conjointly, might have, in some degree, effected the result so painful to the Earl and so aggravating to the Countess, the recent boldness of Marlborough, in representing to his Majesty the detrimental effects of his undue partiality to the Dutch, was the immediate source of the King’s marked displeasure.