About February 6, a further improvement in the King’s state took place, which proved to be decisive. From this time, not only were his equerries allowed to attend him again in the evening, but the Queen was once more admitted to his chamber. Singularly enough, the progress of his recovery coincided exactly with the progress of the Regency Bill. The latter was brought into the House of Commons on the 5th, and on the following day a printed copy was shown to Fanny. “I shuddered,” she writes, “to hear it named.” On the 10th she reports: “The amendment of the King is progressive, and without any reasonable fear, though not without some few drawbacks. The Willis family were surely sent by Heaven to restore peace, and health, and prosperity to this miserable house!” On the 12th the Regency Bill passed the Commons, and was carried up to the House of Lords; it was there subsequently read a second time, went through Committee, and was ordered for a third reading. But that stage was not to arrive. Miss Burney writes on the 13th: “Oh, how dreadful will be the day when that unhappy Bill takes place! I cannot approve the plan of it; the King is too well to make such a step right. It will break his spirits, if not his heart, when he hears and understands such a deposition. “SATURDAY, 14TH.—The King is infinitely better. Oh that there were patience in the land, and this Regency Bill postponed!” Macaulay, quoting part of the entry for the 13th, leaves it to be inferred that the writer disapproved of ‘Pitt’s own Bill’ under any circumstances; he carefully omits the words which show that her objection was to the plan being proceeded with when the King’s recovery was so far advanced as to render it inapplicable. The Ministry speedily made it plain that they were of the same mind as Miss Burney. On the 17th, the Peers, on the motion of the Lord Chancellor, adjourned the further consideration of the Regency Bill; and a week later the measure was finally abandoned. “What a different house,” says the Diary of the 19th, “is this house become!—sadness and terror, that wholly occupied it so lately, are now flown away, or rather are now driven out; and though anxiety still forcibly prevails, ’tis in so small a proportion to joy and thankfulness, that it is borne as if scarce an ill!” Before the month ended, Miss Burney had an assurance of the King’s entire restoration from his own mouth. “The King I have seen again—in the Queen’s dressing-room. On opening the door, there he stood! He smiled at my start; and, saying he had waited on purpose to see me, added, ‘I am quite well now—I was nearly so when I saw you before; but I could overtake you better now.’”