“When I went to my poor Queen, still worse and worse I found her spirits....
“The Princess Royal soon returned. She came in cheerfully, and gave, in German, a history of the airing, and one that seemed comforting.
“Soon after, suddenly arrived the Prince of Wales. He came into the room. He had just quitted Brighthelmstone. Something passing within seemed to render this meeting awfully distant on both sides. She asked if he should not return to Brighthelmstone? He answered yes, the next day. He desired to speak with her; they retired together....
“Only Miss Planta dined with me. We were both nearly silent: I was shocked at I scarcely knew what, and she seemed to know too much for speech. She stayed with me till six o’clock, but nothing passed, beyond general solicitude that the King might get better.
“Meanwhile, a stillness the most uncommon reigned over the whole house. Nobody stirred; not a voice was heard; not a motion. I could do nothing but watch, without knowing for what: there seemed a strangeness in the house most extraordinary.
“At seven o’clock Columb came to tell me that the music was all forbid, and the musicians ordered away!
“This was the last step to be expected, so fond as his Majesty is of his concert, and I thought it might have rather soothed him: I could not understand the prohibition; all seemed stranger and stranger.”
One after another, the usual evening visitors made their appearance. First the equerries, and then Colonel Digby, who had reached the palace that afternoon, came in to tea. “Various small speeches now dropped, by which I found the house was all in disturbance, and the King in some strange way worse, and the Queen taken ill!” Presently the whole truth was divulged. “The King, at dinner, had broken forth into positive delirium, which long had been menacing all who saw him most closely; and the Queen was so overpowered as to fall into violent hysterics. All the Princesses were in misery, and the Prince of Wales had burst into tears. No one knew what was to follow—no one could conjecture the event.”
At ten o’clock, Miss Burney went to her own room to be in readiness for her usual summons to the Queen:
“Two long hours I waited—alone, in silence, in ignorance, in dread! I thought they would never be over; at twelve o’clock I seemed to have spent two whole days in waiting.... I then opened my door, to listen, in the passage, if anything seemed stirring. Not a sound could I hear. My apartment seemed wholly separated from life and motion. Whoever was in the house kept at the other end, and not even a servant crossed the stairs or passage by my rooms.