You will easily conceive
that the terms of my answer to the Duke of Buckingham were those of
unmeasured indignation--yet he, the parasite, the ready instrument
of royal vice, and the malignant associate of Charles in his last
act of premeditated cruelty, suffered the accusations of the injured
husband to pass unnoticed and unrepelled; and I am persuaded that
nothing but the dread of exposure prevented me from feeling the full
abuse of the power of the crown by the master I had served with so
much fidelity and affection. I have never since that period held
direct or indirect communication with a court where the basest
treachery had been my only reward.
"For many months the paroxysms of Lady Greville's distemper were so
violent as to require the strictest confinement; and the medical man
who attended her assured me that when this state of irritation should
subside, she would either be restored entirely to the full exercise
of her mental faculties, or be plunged into a state of apathy, of
tranquil but confirmed dejection, from which, although it might not
affect her bodily health, she would never recover. How anxiously did
I watch for this crisis of her disorder! and yet at times I scarcely
wished her to awake to a keener sense of her afflictions; for being
incapable of recognising my person in my frequent visits to her
chamber, I have heard her address me in her wanderings for pardon
and pity.
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