The Queen continued in a great state of anxiety touching the King’s health, notwithstanding his complete recovery having been declared. He was at times very nervous and depressed--at others, still more nervous and excited. There was less a fear of mental derangement than that his faculties might never recover their former tone. He occasionally behaved strangely in public; was too familiar with the members of the cabinet which succeeded that of which Pitt had been at the head; and, again, was too readily and profoundly affected--too soon elated or cast down--by trifles. On Thursday, the 26th of March, 1801, Lord Malmesbury writes: ‘Drawing-room to-day very crowded. Queen looking pale. Princesses as if they had been weeping. They insinuate that the King is too ill for the Queen to appear in public, and to censure her for it. Dukes of York and Cumberland there. The Prince of Wales _was_ at the drawing-room, but behaved very rudely to the Queen.’ And yet just previously he had made an ostentatious manifestation of his delicacy. Lords Carlisle, Lansdowne, and Fitzwilliam, with Mr. Fox, informed his royal highness that they had formed a coalition, offered him their services, and proposed to hold a conference at Carlton House. The Prince is said to have pleaded, in excuse for declining all they offered, the state of the King’s health; but out of respect to his sire, he said that he should consider it his duty to inform Mr. Addington, the minister, of the nature of their proposals. This he did; and it was perhaps because he regretted the step he had taken that he behaved rudely to his royal mother in her own public drawing-room! The King’s condition still required care and watchfulness. Thus, on the 25th of May, Dr. Thomas Willis writes to Lord Eldon:--‘The general impression yesterday, from the King’s composure and quietness, was that he was very well. There was an exception to this in the Duke of Clarence, who dined here. “He pitied the family, for he saw something in the King that convinced him he must soon be confined again.” ‘This morning I walked with his Majesty, who was in a perfectly composed and quiet state. He told me, with great seeming satisfaction, that he had had a most charming night, “he could sleep from eleven to half after four,” when, alas! he had but three hours’ sleep in the night, which upon the whole was passed in restlessness--in getting out of bed, opening the shutters, in praying violently, and in making such remarks as betray a consciousness of his own situation, but which are evidently made for the purpose of concealing it from the Queen. He frequently called out, “I am now perfectly well, and my Queen--my Queen has saved me!” While I write these particulars to your lordship I must beg to remind you how much afraid the Queen is lest she should be committed to him; for the King has sworn he will never forgive her if she relates anything that passes in the night.’