Reverdil remained by himself in the royal apartments with the monarch. His mania, which he concealed from some persons, and which even the physicians in daily attendance on him had not yet noticed, began at once to manifest itself. "You are Brandt," he said to his visitor; then, breaking into a rapid and incoherent babble, he repeated some verses from _Zaire_, in which tragedy he had acted with Reverdil four years before. Then he said, "You are Denize; you are Latour;" two French actors who had been in his service; and eventually addressed Reverdil by his right name. These extravagances, or a profound silence, or questions about the signs of a change which was incessantly about to take place in his person, occupied nearly three-fourths of the tête-à-tête, during the four months that Reverdil was almost solely with the king, either in his apartments, or driving out, with no other suite but the postilion and a mounted lackey. At times pride exalted the king; he had been greeted like a god by the English nation; other kings were eclipsed; it was too much wit that had turned his head. At other times the king was oppressed and melancholy: after all that he had done; after braving everything: he would never be more than a "little man;" that is to say, a weak and dependent man. He often talked about killing, and asked Reverdil whether he might not do so only once with impunity and without scandal, or whether, if he did so, he would be hopelessly wretched. On other occasions he pretended to attack his own life. "Shall I drown myself?" he would say; "shall I throw myself out of window, or dash out my brains against the wall?" His object was to alarm Reverdil, and by leaving him the choice, he soon forgot this folly. Still it is true that he often desired death, but feared it at the same time. One of the amusements was pulling in a two-oared boat on the small lake round the palace, and the poor king often said to Reverdil, with the most unhappy face in the world, "I should like to throw myself into the lake and be pulled out again directly." His imagination only found a refuge in a state of apathy, which was the object of his hopes and desires. There were three marked shades in his madness, which he indicated by three German expressions.[161] According to the stage of his trouble, he often wound up his remarks by saying, with a groan, "I am confused" (Ich bin confus); or else, "There is a noise in my head" (Es rappelt bei mir); or, lastly, "I am quite beside myself" (Er ist ganz übergeschnappt). At times, his muttered and confused remarks ended with the words, "I can stand it no longer."