In 1784 her fate assumed a darker hue. She was attacked by a malady, to which she had nearly fallen a victim. By an imprudent exposure to the night air in travelling, when, exhausted by fatigue and mental anxiety, she slept in a chaise with the windows open, she brought on a fever, which confined her to her bed during six months. The disorder terminated at the conclusion of that period in a violent rheumatism, which progressively deprived her of the use of her limbs. Thus, at four and twenty years of age, in the pride of youth and the bloom of beauty, was this lovely and unfortunate woman reduced to a state of more than infantile helplessness. Yet, even under so severe a calamity, the powers of her mind and the elasticity of her spirits triumphed over the weakness of her frame. This check to the pleasures and vivacity of youth, by depriving her of external resource, led her to the more assiduous cultivation and development of her talents. But the resignation with which she had submitted to one of the severest of human calamities gave place to hope, on the assurance of her physician, that by the mild air of a more southern climate she might probably be restored to health and activity. The favourite wish of her heart, that of beholding her relations, from whom she had been so many years divided, it was now in her power to gratify. From her elder brother she had frequently received invitations, the most pressing and affectionate, to quit for ever a country where an unprotected woman rarely fails to become the victim of calumny and persecution, and to take shelter in the bosom of domestic tranquillity, where peace, to which she had long been a stranger, might still await her. Delighted with the idea of combining with the object of her travels an acquisition so desirable, and after which her exhausted heart panted, she eagerly embraced the proposal, and set out to Paris, with the resolution of proceeding to Leghorn. But a letter, on her arrival, from her physician, prescribing the warm baths of Aix-la-Chapelle in Germany, as a certain restorative for her complaints, frustrated her plans. Once more she proceeded in melancholy pursuit of that blessing which she was destined never more to obtain.