till the Princesses burst into tears, on which she immediately found relief."[269] [268] Subsequently George asked: "Has she cut my waistcoat? for I have had no time to examine. Nothing could have been done easier, for there was nothing for her to go through but a thin linen and fat." [269] Mrs. Delany: _Autobiography and Correspondence_. [Illustration: _From an old print_ THE KING'S LIFE ATTEMPTED] Thirteen years later, on October 29, 1795, on his way to open Parliament, he was surrounded by a violent mob, who threw stones into the carriage, and demanded peace and the dismissal of Pitt. Lord Onslow, who was with the King, has left an account of the distressing incident. "Before I sleep let me bless God for the miraculous escape which my King, my country, and myself, have had this day. Soon after two o'clock, his Majesty, attended by the Earl of Westmoreland and myself, set out for St. James's in his state coach, to open the session of Parliament. The multitude of people in the park was prodigious. A sullen silence, I observed to myself, prevailed through the whole, very few individuals excepted. No hats, or at least very few, pulled off; little or no huzzaing, and frequently a cry of 'give us bread': 'no war': and once or twice, 'no King'! with hissing and groaning. My grandson Cranley, who was on the King's guard, had told me, just before we set out from St. James's that the park was full of people who seemed discontented and tumultuous, and that he apprehended insult would be offered to the King. Nothing material, however, happened, till we got down to the narrowest part of the street called St. Margaret's, between the two palace yards, when, the moment we had passed the Office of Ordnance, and were just opposite the parlour window of the house adjoining it, a small ball, either of lead or marble, passed through the window glass on the King's right hand and perforating it, leaving a small hole, the bigness of the top of my little finger (which I instantly put through to mark the size), and passed through the coach out of the other door, the glass of which was down. We all instantly exclaimed, 'This is a shot!' The King showed, and I am persuaded, felt no alarm; much less did he fear, to which indeed he is insensible. We proceeded to the House of Lords, when, on getting out of the coach, I first, and the King immediately after, said to the Lord Chancellor, who was at the bottom of the stairs to receive the King, 'My Lord, we have been shot at.' The King ascended the stairs, robed, and then perfectly free from the smallest agitation, read his speech with peculiar correctness, and even less hesitation than usual. At his unrobing afterwards, when the event got more known (I having told it to the Duke of York's ear as I passed under the throne, and to the others who stood near us), it was, as might be supposed, the only topic of conversation, in which the King joined with much less agitation than anybody else.