On the third morning of the four, Frederick insisted on teaching his men their duty by sitting his horse for six hours in a deluge of rain without the shelter of a cloak. In spite of the inevitable chill, he then presided at dinner, at which the Duke of York, Lafayette, and Cornwallis were among the guests. Fever and ague followed, but he shook them off in a night and completed the review, the progress through Silesia, the journey to Potsdam, and the inspection of artillery at Berlin. On September 10th, he left his capital for the last time. At Potsdam, on the eve of the Grand Review, the blow fell. Within a month of his indiscretion in Silesia he was seized in the night with a fit of apoplexy (September 18–19, 1785). Gout, asthma, dropsy, and erysipelas set in, and after days of torment he was compelled to spend his nights in fighting for breath in an armchair. Yet no disease could break his spirit. “There is traceable,” says Carlyle with fine insight, “only a complete superiority to Fear and Hope.” Partly, perhaps, because Austrian troops might menace the frontiers if his weakness were known, but doubtless in part out of fortitude and pride, he concealed his illness so far as possible from his subjects and from his friends. He performed the labours of the Cabinet with unclouded brain and with a growing fever of energy. His mind was full of plans for establishing new villages upon the districts reclaimed from the sand, for providing technical instruction in agriculture, and for arranging the coming manœuvres in Silesia. He continued to read history day by day, and to converse cheerfully with his friends. Once he enquired of the Duke of Courland whether he needed a good watchman, maintaining that his sleeplessness at nights qualified him to fill the post. After seven months of suffering he entertained Mirabeau with lively conversation, though his state was so pitiable as to render the interview painful to his favoured guest. Very early on the morning of April 17, 1786, he left the palace in Potsdam town, where he had passed the winter, and made a long, circuitous journey to his favourite abode, Sans Souci. But the change was powerless to bring relief. Some days he was too weak to converse as usual with his guests. On June 30th, however, he shocked his doctor by taking a copious dinner of strong soup full of spices, beef steeped in brandy, maize and cheese flavoured with, garlic, and a whole plateful of pungent eel-pie. Four days later he actually quitted his chair for a short gallop on horseback, but the exertion left him prostrate.