That night the Supper-Party was exclusively a Family one.
Her Brother's welcome to her on the morrow, though ardent enough, she found deficient in sincerity, deficient in several points; as indeed a Brother up to the neck in business, and just come out of an ague-fit, does not appear to the best advantage.

Wilhelmina noticed how ill he looked, so lean and broken-down (MAIGRE ET DEFAIT) within the last two months; but seems to have taken no account of it farther, in striking her balances with Friedrich.

And indeed in her Narrative of this Visit, not, we will hope, in the Visit itself, she must have been in a high state of magnetic deflection,--pretty nearly her maximum of such, discoverable in those famous MEMOIRS,--such a tumult is there in her statements, all gone to ground-and-lofty tumbling in this place; so discrepant are the still ascertainable facts from this topsy-turvy picture of them, sketched by her four years hence (in 1744).

The truest of magnetic needles; but so sensitive, if you bring foreign iron near it! Wilhelmina was loaded with honors by an impartial Berlin Public that is Court Public; "but, all being in mourning, the Court was not brilliant.
The Queen Mother saw little company, and was sunk in sorrow;--had not the least influence in affairs, so jealous was the new King of his Authority,--to the Queen Mother's surprise," says Wilhelmina.

For the rest, here is a King "becoming truly unpopular [or, we fancy so, in our deflected state, and judging by the rumor of cliques]; a general discontent reigning in the Country, love of his subjects pretty much gone; people speaking of him in no measured terms [in certain cliques].
Cares nothing about those who helped him as Prince Royal, say some; others complain of his avarice [meaning steady vigilance in outlay] as surpassing the late King's; this one complained of his violences of temper (EMPORTEMENS); that one of his suspicions, of his distrust, his haughtinesses, his dissimulation" (meaning polite impenetrability when he saw good).