In the evening I had no little difficulty how to manage to go to Mrs.
Delany,--for I have here to mention the worst thing that has happened
to me at Windsor,--the desertion of Major Price from the coffee. The
arrival of General Bude, who belongs to the equerries' table, has
occasioned his staying to do the honours to him till terrace time. At
tea, they belong to Mrs. Schwellenberg.
This has not only lost me some of his society, the most pleasant I had
had in the Lodge, but has trebled my trouble to steal away. While I left
him behind, the absconding from a beau was apology all-sufficient for
running away from a belle; but now I am doubly wanted to stay, and
too-doubly earnest to go!...
I went into my own room for my cloak, and, as usual, found Madame de
la Fite just waiting for me. She was all emotion,--she seized my
hand,--“Have you heard?--O mon Dieu!--O le bon Roi! O Miss Burney!--what
an horrreur!”
I was very much startled, but soon ceased to wonder at her
perturbation;--she had been in the room with the Princess Elizabeth, and
there heard, from Miss Goldsworthy, that an attempt had just been made
upon the life of the king!
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.