The Queen would hardly leave his bedchamber. The dear, unfortunate man, as patient in agony as he had been complacent in health, lay motionless and speechless, emitting no sound but his stertorous breathing, surrounded by doctors who, I very much fear, only tortured him. The Queen, her eyes misty with sorrow, sat in an armchair by the window, her hands playing with her bandages. In the intervals when the doctors spared their patient, she moved to the bedside so that she could hold the Prince's hand. When I went in to sit by her side, her first thought was of my condition. "Are you well enough, my dear, to be up?" "Oh, yes, ma'am, quite well enough. Pray don't think of me at such a time." "But of course I do. How is your little daughter?" "Oh, she has her wet nurse. She is content." "Would it were so with my poor husband! Oh, Masham, do you know I never had an unkind word from him?" "Not even the lowest of his servants had." "That's true, isn't it? He was so good to all. A kind of saint, in his way.
