I was almost petrified with horror at the intelligence. If this king is not safe—good, pious, beneficent as he is—if his life is in danger, from his own subjects, what is to guard the throne? and which way is a monarch to be secure?
Madame de la Fite had heard of the attempt only, not the particulars; but I was afterwards informed of them in the most interesting manner,—namely, how they were related to the queen. And as the newspapers will have told you all else, I shall only and briefly tell that.
No information arrived here of the matter before his majesty's return, at the usual hour in the afternoon, from the levee. The Spanish minister had hurried off instantly to Windsor, and was in waiting, at Lady Charlotte Finch's, to be ready to assure her majesty of the king's safety, in case any report anticipated his return.
The queen had the two eldest princesses, the Duchess of Ancaster, and Lady Charlotte Bertie with her when the king came in. He hastened up to her, with a countenance of striking vivacity, and said, “Here I am!—safe and well,—as you see!—but I have very narrowly escaped being stabbed!”
His own conscious safety, and the pleasure he felt in thus personally shewing it to the queen, made him not aware of the effect of so abrupt a communication. The queen was seized with a consternation that at first almost stupefied her, and after a most painful silence, the first words she could articulate were, in looking round at the duchess and Lady Charlotte, who had both burst into tears,—“I envy you!—I can't cry!”
The two princesses were for a little while in the same state but the tears of the duchess proved infectious, and they then' wept even with violence.
THE ATTEMPT AGAINST THE KING.
The king, with the gayest good-humour, did his utmost to comfort them; and then gave a relation of the affair, with a calmness and unconcern that, had any one but himself been his hero, would have been regarded as totally unfeeling.
You may have heard it wrong; I will concisely tell it right. His carriage had just stopped at the garden-door at St. James's, and he had just alighted from it, when a decently-dressed woman, who had been waiting for him some time, approached him, with a petition. It was rolled up, and had the usual superscription—“For the king's most excellent majesty.” She presented it with her right hand; and at the same moment that the king bent forward to take it, she drew from it, with her left hand, a knife, with which she aimed straight at his heart.