342

31IST0T1Y OF ENGLAND.

CHAP.

XX.

1694.

the lover. Towards the end of the year 1C94, this pestilencewas more than usually severe. At length the infection spreadto the palace, and reached the young and blooming Queen.She received the intimation of her danger with true greatnessof soul. She gave orders that every lady of her bedchamber,every maid of honour, nay, every menial servant, who had nothad the small pox, should instantly leave Kensington House.She locked herself up during a short time in her closet,burned some papers, arranged others, and then calmly awaitedher fate.

During two or three days there were many alternations ofhope and fear. The physicians contradicted each other andthemselves in a way which sufficiently indicates the state ofmedical science in that age. The disease was measles: it wasscarlet fever: it was spotted fever: it was erysipelas. At onemoment some symptoms, which in truth showed that the casewas almost hopeless, were hailed as indications of returninghealth. At length all doubt was over. Radelifie’s opinionproved to be right. It was plain that the Queen was sinkingunder small pox of the most malignant type.

All this time William remained night and day near her bed-side. The little couch on which he slept when he was in campwas spread for him in the antechamber: but he scarcely laydown on it. The sight of his misery, the Dutch Envoy wrote,was enough to melt the hardest heart. Nothing seemed to beleft of the man whose serene fortitude had been the wonder ofold soldiers on the disastrous day of Landen, and of old sailorson that fearful night among the sheets of ice and banks of sandon the coast of Goree. The very domestics’ saw the tearsrunning unchecked down that face, of which the stern com-posure-had seldom been disturbed by any triumph or by anydefeat. Several of the prelates were in attendance. The Kingdrew Burnet aside, and gave way to an agony of grief. “There