Life in the royal palace at Berlin was cheerless in Frederick's childhood; poorer in love and sunshine than in most citizens' households at that rude time. It may be doubted whether the king his father, or the queen, was more to blame for the disorganization of the family life--in either case through natural defects which grew more pronounced in the constant friction of the household. The king, an odd tyrant with a soft heart but a violent temper, tried to compel love and confidence with a cudgel; he possessed keen insight into human nature, but was so ignorant that he always ran the risk of becoming the victim of a scoundrel. Dimly aware of his weakness, he had grown suspicious and was subject to sudden fits of violence. The queen, in contrast, was a rather insignificant woman, colder at heart, but with a strong sense of her princely dignity; with a tendency to intrigue, without prudence or discretion. Both had the best of intentions, and took honest pains to bring up their children to a capable and worthy maturity; but both unintelligently interfered with the sound development of the childish souls. The mother was so tactless as to make the children, even at a tender age, the confidants of her annoyances and intrigues. The undignified parsimony of the king, the blows which he distributed so freely in his rooms, and the monotonous daily routine which he forced upon her, were the subject of no end of complaining, sulking, and ridicule in her apartments. Crown Prince Frederick grew up, the playmate of his elder sister, into a gentle child with sparkling eyes and beautiful light hair. He was taught with exactness what the king desired,--and that was little enough: French, a certain amount of history, and the necessary accomplishments of a soldier. Against the will of his father (the great King had never surmounted the difficulties of the genitive and dative) he acquired some knowledge of the Latin declensions. To the boy, who was easily led and in the king's presence looked shy and defiant, the women imparted his first interest in French literature. He himself later gave his sister the credit for it, but his governess too was an accomplished French woman. That the foreign atmosphere was hateful to the king certainly contributed to make the son fond of it; for almost systematically praise was bestowed in the queen's apartments upon everything that was displeasing to the stern mind of the master. When in the family circle the king made one of his clumsy, pious speeches, Princess Wilhelmina and young Frederick would look at each other significantly, until the mischievous face of one or the other aroused childish laughter, and brought the king's wrath to the point of explosion. For this reason, the son, even in his earliest years, became a source of vexation to his father, who called him an effeminate, untidy fellow with an unmanly pleasure in clothes and trifles.