During the first part of his journey the king had been remarkably cheerful and genial, but toward its close he was attacked by a new fit of very serious illness. To the discomfort of all, his chronic moodiness returned. A few extracts from Pöllnitz’s account of this journey throws interesting light upon those scenes: “Till now his majesty has been in especial good-humor. But in Dantzig his cheerfulness forsook him, and it never came back. He arrived about ten o’clock at night in that city, slept there, and was off again next morning at five. He drove only fifty miles this day; stopped in Luppow. From Luppow he went to a poor village near Belgard, and staid there overnight. “At Belgard next morning he reviewed the dragoon regiment, and was very ill content with it. And nobody, with the least understanding of that business, but must own that never did Prussian regiment manœuvre worse. Conscious themselves how bad it was, they lost head and got into confusion. The king did every thing that was possible to help them into order again, but it was all in vain. The king, contrary to wont, restrained himself amazingly, and would not show his displeasure in public. He got into his carriage and drove away, not staying to dine with General Von Platen, as was always his custom with commandants whom he had reviewed. “As the prince was anxious to come up with his majesty again, and knew not where he would meet him, we had to be very swift in the business. We found the king, with Anhalt and Winterfeld, by-and-by, sitting in a village in front of a barn, eating a cold pie there which the Marquis of Anhalt chanced to have with him. His majesty, owing to what he had seen on the parade-ground, was in the utmost ill-humor. Next day, Saturday, he went a hundred and fifty or two hundred miles, and arrived in Berlin at ten o’clock at night, not expected there till the morrow, so that his rooms were locked, her majesty being over in Monbijou giving her children a ball.” Late in the fall of 1739 the health of Frederick William was so rapidly failing that it became manifest to all that his days on earth would soon be ended. He sat joylessly in his palace, listening to the moaning of the wind, the rustle of the falling leaves, and the pattering of the rain. His gloomy spirit was in accord with the melancholy days. More dreary storms darkened his turbid soul than those which wrecked the autumnal sky.