Blackburn), 'but he is buried;' upon which she
had sent for him to court. Yet he was not courageous enough, it seems,
to speak to her of her son and of the duty of reconciliation; whether
she ever sent the prince any message or not is uncertain; Lord Hervey is
silent on that point, so that it is to be feared that Lord
Chesterfield's line--
'And, unforgiving, unforgiven, dies!'
had but too sure a foundation in fact; so that Pope's sarcastic verses--
'Hang the sad verse on Carolina's urn,
And hail her passage to the realms of rest;
All _parts performed_ and _all_ her children blest,'
may have been but too just, though cruelly bitter. The queen lingered
till the 20th of November. During that interval of agony her consort was
perpetually boasting to every one of her virtues, her sense, her
patience, her softness, her delicacy; and ending with the praise,
'_Comme elle soutenoit sa dignite avec grace, avec politesse, avec
douceur!_' Nevertheless he scarcely ever went into her room. Lord Hervey
states that he did, even in this moving situation, _snub_ her for
something or other she did or said. One morning, as she lay with her
eyes fixed on a point in the air, as people sometimes do when they want
to keep their thoughts from wandering, the king coarsely told her 'she
looked like a calf which had just had its throat cut.
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