The Duke of York was one day conversing with his brother, George III., when the latter remarked that he seemed in unusually low spirits. “How can I be otherwise,” said the Duke, “when I am subjected to so many calls from my creditors, without having sixpence to pay them?” The King, it is said, immediately gave him a thousand-pound note, every word of which he read aloud in a tone of mock gravity, and then he marched out of the room singing the first verse of “God Save the King.” When one day standing between Lord Eldon and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Sutton, his Majesty gravely remarked, “I am now in a position which probably no European king ever occupied,” for, he afterwards explained, “I am standing between the head of the Church and the head of the Law in my kingdom--men who ought to be the patterns of morality, but who have been guilty of the greatest immorality.” On Lord Eldon begging to know to what his Majesty alluded, the King humorously added, “Well, my lords, did you not both run away with your wives?” When a certain admiral, well known for his gallant spirit, was introduced to William IV., to return thanks for his promotion, the cheerful and affable monarch, looking at his hair, which was almost as white as snow, jocosely remarked, “White at the main, admiral! white at the main!” But his Majesty was a very moderate joker, preferring to hear a good joke from others. It is said that when heir-presumptive he one day said to a secretary of the Admiralty who was at the same dinner table, “C----, when I am King you shall not be Admiralty Secretary! Eh, what do you say to that?” “All that I have to say to that, in such a case, is,” said C----, “God save the King!” Dr. Doran quotes an amusing anecdote to the effect that the King never laughed so heartily as when he was told of a certain parvenu lady who, dining at Sir John Copley’s, ventured to express her surprise that “there was no _pilfered_ water on the table.” In conversation, Queen Victoria appreciated homely wit of a quiet kind, and laughed without restraint when a jest or anecdote appealed to her. Subtlety and indelicacy offended her, and sometimes evoked a scornful censure. Although she naturally expected courtesy of address, she was not conciliated by obsequiousness. “It is useless to ask ----’s opinion,” she would say; “he only tries to echo mine.” Her own conversation had often the charm of naïveté. When told that a very involved piece of modern German music, to which she was listening with impatience, was a drinking song by Rubinstein, she remarked, “Why, you could not drink a cup of tea to that.”[115] According to Brantôme, Louis XI., wishing one day to have something written, espied an ecclesiastic with an inkstand hanging at his side, from which--having opened at the King’s request--a set of dice fell out. “What kind of sugar-plums are these?” asked his Majesty. “Sire,” replied the priest, “they are a remedy for the plague.”