He approached her, his hand raised; she smiled at him; so he contented himself with spitting into her soup.

‘That,’ she added, placidly, ‘will not I fear improve the flavour.’ She began to read her brother’s letter, and laughed. ‘George is such a fool,’ she said.

‘So you have sense enough to see that! ‘

‘And you,’ she added, ‘are a brute. Between you, you should manage to enjoy your correspondence.’

‘Enjoy! I tell you that if I had that little brother of yours here I’d take his neck in my hands and choke the life out of him.’

‘Don’t be too sure he’d let you do it. He’s something of a soldier, you know. And what he lacks in sense he makes up for in courage.’

‘Then he has to have a lot of courage.’

‘He has.’

The Crown Prince and Princess Wilhelmina entered. Their mother glanced at them anxiously; in spite of the ill-treatment they received from their father they did not appear to be unduly afraid. Blows had become commonplace to them. She wondered when Fritz would turn on his father; as for Wilhelmina, whatever marriage she made she could not find a husband to ill-treat her more than her father had.

‘Come here, you devil’s brood,’ he cried.

‘Aptly named,’ put in the Queen.

‘I was referring to you, Madam.’

‘You are unusually modest. It is your custom to exaggerate your own performance.’ Sophia Dorothea always attempted to turn his attention on herself and away from her children; they were aware of it and loved her for it; but they were so accustomed to the wild life led in their father’s palace that they were prepared for violence.

‘And what are you grinning at?’ he demanded of his daughter.

‘I assure you, Father, that I find very little to smile at.’

He lifted his hand and struck her but it was a mild blow compared with those he was accustomed to deliver.

‘This fool of an uncle, your mother’s brother, has been writing to me again. It seems he’s annoyed because we won’t have his daughter here. You’re not going to marry this girl, I tell you. I’ll not have her walking about my Court with her nose in the air making trouble. I don’t hear very good accounts of your cousins in England.’

‘At least,’ said the Queen, ‘my brother was against the match between Frederick and Wilhelmina.’

‘If you hadn’t been such a prattling fool, woman, we’d have that girl of yours off our hands and your brother would be paying the cost of feeding her instead of me.’

‘The fact is,’ put in the Queen, ‘that George Augustus wants us to take his daughter but won’t take ours.’

‘Well, he has some sense after all. He wants to get a girl off his hands and so do we.’

Wilhelmina flinched and the Queen said: ‘Although it would be a good match for Wilhelmina to marry the Prince of Wales, I should be desolate at losing her.’

The King threw back his head and laughed. ‘You fool!’ he shouted. Then he turned to his daughter. ‘Do you think I should be desolate too? Do you?’

‘No, Father,’ answered Wilhelmina. ‘I know you would be glad to be rid of me. It would save you working out so often how much it costs to feed me.’

He caught her by the ear. She stood very still because the more she moved the more painful it would be.

‘Well,’ said the King, releasing her, ‘it would save me time as well as money. But they won’t have you, daughter. The King of England won’t have you, and the Prince of Wales does not want you either.’

Wilhelmina said with some spirit: ‘He has written to say that he is eager to marry me. He has even said that he is foolishly in love.’

The King laughed again. ‘Foolishly. He admits that. The young man has never seen you.’

‘Perhaps accounts of my life here make him feel he would like to rescue me.’

The King was bewildered. Wilhelmina was growing like her mother. She was showing some spirit. She would have to be married soon. He did not want to have to contend with another woman’s sharp tongue.

This thought made him less violent than usual. He turned to his son. ‘And you ... when are you going to marry, eh? You’ll take the wife I find and say thank you.’

The Queen looked anxiously at her son. He was always calm in contrast to his father; it was as though he was only half aware of him as something that must be endured for a while, but not forever. The Queen believed that in her son were seeds of greatness and that the King was aware of this and was sometimes overawed by it and sometimes goaded to even greater violence.

Fritz listened impassively.

‘Well, well,’ cried his father. ‘Don’t stand there like a dummy.’

‘I shall be pleased to marry when a suitable bride is found for me,’ said Fritz.

The King looked frustrated. This family of his would give him no cause to chastise them. Only his wife provoked him, and he did not care to harm her.

‘This fool of a King of England!’ he shouted. ‘Where’s the letter?’

‘A little the worse for a dip in the soup,’ said the Queen, throwing it at him.

It fluttered at his feet; and Fritz picked it up and handed it to his father who proceeded to read it in loud derisive tones.

‘Do you know what I am going to answer this popinjay?’

He glared at them all and went on: ‘I am going to tell him to go back to England where perhaps they are foolish enough to put up with him. I’m going to tell him that if he stays here ... in Germany ... if he writes such letters to me I will take my sword to him and cut off his head and send it back to his dear wife in England who, I understand, he is fool enough to let rule him. I’ll tell him what I think of him. What a family! ‘

‘Your own,’ murmured the Queen.

But the King was too intent on composing an insulting answer to hear her.

George paced up and down his apartment, eyes blazing. Townshend was doing his best to placate him.

‘This madman! ‘ spluttered George. ‘This cousin of mine! How my sister lives with him, I can’t imagine. He’s mad, I tell you. But mad or not he shall not insult me in this manner.’

‘Your Majesty, a note couched in such undiplomatic language should perhaps be ignored.’

‘Ignored. Let him insult me and I ignore him! I tell you this, Townshend, I shall not allow this to pass. Do you know what I am going to do? I am going to challenge the King of Prussia to a duel.’

‘Your Majesty, that would not be possible.’

‘And why, pray?’

Two Kings cannot fight a duel. It has never been. It could not be.’

‘Then we will be the first, for I tell you this, Townshend: I will not be insulted by this man.’

‘Your Majesty .

‘My mind is made up. I shall challenge the King of Prussia and tell him to choose his weapons.’

Townshend looked at his master helplessly; but he could not control him as the Queen and Walpole managed to do.

The King of Prussia was delighted to receive his cousin’s challenge. His family had never seen him in such a good mood. A choice of weapons. He could not decide, he told his wife, whether it should be swords or pistols. He would enjoy firing a shot through his silly heart; on the other hand it would give him even greater satisfaction to slice off his even sillier head.

The Queen shrugged her shoulders; she did not believe for a moment that the two foolish men would ever be allowed to fight in single combat; their ministers would find some way of putting a stop to such antics.

She was right. The King of Prussia’s ministers conferred with those of the King of England and between them they worked out a compromise whereby the two Kings could abandon their foolish project without loss of face on either side.

Townshend, when he did not have to placate the King, was a past master at this art; and so well did he work with the Prussian ministers that in a short time they were trying to bring the two Kings to an agreement about the marriage of the Crown Prince and the Princess Amelia.