“How long can this last?”
“I think,” he replied, “that your Majesty will soon be relieved from suffering.”
“The sooner the better,” she answered.
Lord Hervey thus describes the last scene:
“About ten o’clock on Sunday night—the King being in bed and asleep on the floor at the foot of the Queen’s bed, and the Princess Emily in a couch-bed in a corner of the room—the Queen began to rattle in her throat; and Mrs. Purcel, giving the alarm that she was expiring, all in the room started up, Princess Caroline was sent for and Lord Hervey, but before the last arrived the Queen was just dead. All she said before she died was:
“I have now got an asthma. Open the window.” Then she added:
“Pray.”
Upon which the Princess Emily began to read some prayers, of which she scarcely repeated ten words when the Queen expired. The Princess Caroline held a looking-glass to her lips, and, finding there was not the least damp upon it, cried: “’Tis over!”
The King kissed the face and hands of the lifeless body several times, but in a few minutes left the Queen’s apartment.
Thus died Caroline, by some called “The Illustrious,” by some even “The Great,” but whose character was such a mixture of great and little things that it is most difficult to give an accurate estimate of its virtues or vices.