Albeit generous and warm-hearted, Maria Luisa was of a somewhat arrogant disposition. This was seen when she was only twelve years old, in the tone of superiority she adopted in her home after the contract of her marriage to the heir of the Spanish throne had been signed. Her brother Ferdinand resented this assumption of superiority, and remonstrated with his sister on the subject. Upon this the Princess promptly lost her temper, and said: “I will teach you to pay me the attention which you owe me, because I shall finally be Queen of Spain, whilst you will never be more than a little Duke of Parma!” “Well, the Duke of Parma will have the honour of slapping the Queen of Spain,” was the reply, and Ferdinand promptly gave his sister a slap in the face. The Duke was then arrested by order of his father, and he was only released at the plea of his sister, who was sorry when the quarrel assumed such a serious aspect. When crowned Queen of Spain, in 1789, as the wife of Charles IV., twenty-four years after her marriage, Maria Luisa soon showed that her impulsive nature, which knew no check from her husband, would bring her country to grief. Captivated by the young Godoy, she surprised and alarmed the nation by the swift way she exalted him to the highest position in the realm. As the favourite had known how to dominate the will of the King, as well as to subjugate the heart of the Queen, there was no limit to his power, and when he was given the title of “The Prince of the Peace,” for the alliance he made with the French, the animosity of the nation was so much excited that public interest was soon centred in Prince Ferdinand as one who might free the Court from the favourite, and thus save the country from the disastrous effect of an undue submission to France. As Alcalá Galiano says in his “Memorias,” “The title of ‘Prince’ conferred on Godoy seemed to detract from the dignity of the Royal Family.” The Prince of Asturias was at this time eleven years of age. It must be remembered that the Queen had never gained any real hold on her son’s love. She was naturally disinclined to any efforts dictated by maternal love, and she had taken no pains to overcome the constitutional defects of her son, which were repellent to her lively imagination and quick temperament. In a letter to the Grand Duke of Berg, the Prince is described by the royal mother as peculiarly deficient in sensibility, and she remarks that his torpid nerves indeed required strong stimulants for their exercise. He spoke little, rarely smiled, and found a sardonic satisfaction in all kinds of petty acts of cruelty. He liked to crush a little bird if it fell into his hands, and, indeed, pity was a quality to which he was a stranger.