The Queen, elated with the notion infused into her, that she was by these preferences gaining a victory over the Marlborough family, became more and more estranged from one to whom she had, in her ignorance of the meaning of the word, professed true friendship. It was reported, that as the peers returned out of her closet, she said to them severally, “If ever any recommendation of mine was of weight among you, as I know many of them have been, I hope this one may be specially regarded.”[161] It is difficult to say whether, at this time, the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough were most injured by their professed friends, or by avowed enemies. It is, perhaps, a problem which we may often vainly endeavour, in our progress through life, to solve, whether injudicious zeal or open enmity should most inspire us with apprehension. Enthusiasm in friendship is the parent of indiscretion; and what is termed devotion, in a human sense, has so often as its source a fund of selfishness, that we are apt to consider ourselves safer when encountering indifference, than when constrained to bend to the persuasions of ardent attachment. Godolphin was, undoubtedly, amongst all the band of adherents, the only true friend whom the Duke and Duchess possessed. His attachment to them was genuine; their confidence in him was entire. No variations of temper—no differences of opinion, seem to have disturbed that perfect accordance in sentiment, that respectful admiration on one side, and that reposing of every thought or wish on the other, which is the true elysium of affectionate hearts. Godolphin now experienced, in the decline of his fortunes, the mutability of all other friendships, the hollowness and selfishness of public men. It is easy to the interested to persuade themselves that they really contemn those who are not only no longer useful to them, but whose friendship might even be prejudicial. The Duke of Somerset, once the friend of Marlborough, as his Duchess had been of the Duchess—a man of great pride, and of considerable influence—now seceded from his once intimate associates, piqued by the Duke’s refusing a regiment to his son. The Duke of Argyll and the Earl of Rivers had already made a friendly compact to divide between them the offices which they expected soon to be vacant, on the disgrace or resignation of Marlborough. Other noblemen were drawn in by their necessities to desert to the opposite party. But the most remarkable defection from the Whig party was that of the Duke of Shrewsbury, the early friend of Lord Somers, but now the partisan of Harley, the associate of Swift, and the husband of a Roman Catholic wife, an Italian lady, who had followed him to Augsburg from Rome, and whose ardent passion for the accomplished Shrewsbury had induced him to make her Duchess of Shrewsbury.