Of the scene in the King’s rooms that night, Miss Burney had only a momentary glimpse. Being sent on some commission for the Queen, “When I gently opened,” she writes, “the door of the apartment to which I was directed, I found it quite filled with gentlemen and attendants, arranged round it on chairs and sofas, in dead silence. It was a dreadful start with which I retreated; for anything more alarming and shocking could not be conceived—the poor King within another door, unconscious anyone was near him, and thus watched, by dread necessity, at such an hour of the night!” How the hours passed she heard the next day. “7TH.—While I was yet with my poor royal sufferer this morning the Prince of Wales came hastily into the room. He apologized for his intrusion, and then gave a very energetic history of the preceding night. It had been indeed most affectingly dreadful! The King had risen in the middle of the night, and would take no denial to walking into the next room. There he saw the large congress I have mentioned: amazed and in consternation, he demanded what they did there? Much followed that I have heard since, particularly the warmest eloge on his dear son Frederick, his favourite, his friend. ‘Yes,’ he cried, ‘Frederick is my friend!’—and this son was then present amongst the rest, but not seen! “Sir George Baker was there, and was privately exhorted by the gentlemen to lead the King back to his room; but he had not courage: he attempted only to speak, and the King penned him in a corner, told him he was a mere old woman—that he wondered he had ever followed his advice, for he knew nothing of his complaint, which was only nervous! “The Prince of Wales, by signs and whispers, would have urged others to have drawn him away, but no one dared approach him, and he remained there a considerable time, ‘Nor do I know when he would have been got back,’ continued the Prince, ‘if at last Mr. Digby[94] had not undertaken him. I am extremely obliged to Mr. Digby indeed.’ He came boldly up to him, and took him by the arm, and begged him to go to bed, and then drew him along, and said he must go. Then he said he would not, and cried, ‘Who are you?’ ‘I am Mr. Digby, sir,’ he answered, ‘and your Majesty has been very good to me often, and now I am going to be very good to you, for you must come to bed, sir: it is necessary to your life. And then he was so surprised that he let himself be drawn along just like a child; and so they got him to bed. I believe else he would have stayed all night!’”