Accordingly, twice he brought the princess to London, and twice returned with her to Hampton Court. Each time the journey had been undertaken on symptoms of indisposition coming on, which, however, passed away. At length one evening, the prince and princess, after dining in public with the King and Queen, took leave of them for the night, and withdrew to their apartments. Up to this hour the princess had appeared to be in her ordinary health. Tokens of supervening change came on, and the prince at once prepared for action. The night (the 31st of July) was now considerably advanced, and the Princess of Wales, who had been hitherto eager to obey her husband’s wishes in all things, was now too ill to do anything but pray against them. He would not listen to such petitions. He ordered his ‘coach’ to be got ready and brought round to a side entrance of the palace. The lights in the apartment were in the meantime extinguished. He consigned his wife to the strong arms of Desnoyers, the dancing-master, and Bloodworth, an attendant, who dragged, rather than carried, her down stairs. In the meantime, the poor lady, whose life was in very present peril, and sufferings extreme, prayed earnestly to be permitted to remain where she was. Subsequently she protested to the Queen that all that had been done had taken place at her own express desire! However this may be, the prince answered her prayers and moans by calling on her to have courage; upbraiding her for her folly; and assuring her, with a very manly complacency, that it was nothing, and would soon be over! At length the coach was reached. It was the usually capacious vehicle of the time, and into it got not only the prince and princess, but Lady Archibald Hamilton and two female attendants. Vriad, who was not only a _valet-de-chambre_, but a surgeon and _accoucheur_, mounted the box. Bloodworth, the dancing-master, and two or three more, got up behind. The prince enjoined the strictest silence on such of his household as remained at Hampton Court, and therewith the coach set off, at a gallop, not for the prince’s own residence at Kew, but for St. James’s Palace, which was at twice the distance. At the palace nothing was prepared for them. There was not a couch ready for the exhausted lady, who had more than once on the road been, as it seemed, upon the point of expiring; not even a bed was ready for her to lie down and repose upon. No sheets were to be found in the whole palace--or at least in that part over which the prince had any authority. For lack of them, Frederick and Lady Hamilton aired a couple of tablecloths, and these did the service required of them.