Before I gained the Life Guard’s House I met a dozen horsemen, amongst them Banks on a mount of Mr. Fox’s.  They shouted when they saw me, Colonel St. John calling out that he had won another hundred that I was not dead.  Sir John Brooke puffed and swore he did not begrudge his losses to see me safe, despite Captain Lewis’s sourness.  Storey vowed he would give a dinner in my honour, and, riding up beside me, whispered that he was damned sorry the horse was now broken, and his Grace’s chance of being killed taken away.  And thus escorted, I came in by the King’s New Road to avoid the people running in the Row, and so down to Hyde Park Corner, and in among the chaises and the phaetons, where there was enough cheering and waving of hats and handkerchiefs to please the most exacting of successful generals.  I rode up to my Lord March, and finding there was a minute yet to run I went up the Row a distance and back again amidst more huzzaing, Pollux prancing and quivering, and frothing his bit, but never once attempting to break.

When I had got down, they pressed around me until I could scarce breathe, crying congratulations, Comyn embracing me openly.  Mr. Fox vowed he had never seen so fine a sight, and said many impolitic things which the duke must have overheard . . . .  Lady Carlisle sent me a red rose for my buttonhole by his Lordship.  Mr. Warner, the lively parson with my Lord March, desired to press my hand, declaring that he had won a dozen of port upon me, which he had set his best cassock against.  My Lord Sandwich offered me snuff, and invited me to Hichinbroke.  Indeed, I should never be through were I to continue.  But I must not forget my old acquaintance Mr. Walpole, who protested that he must get permission to present me to Princess Amelia:  that her Royal Highness would not rest content now, until she had seen me.  I did not then know her Highness’s sporting propensity.

Then my Lord March called upon the duke, who stood in the midst of an army of his toadeaters.  I almost pitied him then, tho’ I could not account for the feeling.  I think it was because a nobleman with so great a title should be so cordially hated and despised.  There were high words along the railing among the duke’s supporters, Captain Lewis, in his anger, going above an inference that the stallion had been broken privately.  Chartersea came forward with an indifferent swagger, as if to say as much:  and, in truth, no one looked for more sport, and some were even turning away.  He had scarce put foot to the stirrup, when the surprise came.  Two minutes were up before he was got in the saddle, Pollux rearing and plunging and dancing in a circle, the grooms shouting and dodging, and his Grace cursing in a voice to wake the dead and Mr. Fox laughing, and making small wagers that he would never be mounted.  But at last the duke was up and gripped, his face bloody red, giving vent to his fury with the spurs.

Then something happened, and so quickly that it cannot be writ fast enough.  Pollux bolted like a shot out of a sling, vaulted the railing as easily as you or I would hop over a stick, and galloping across the lawn and down the embankment flung his Grace into the Serpentine.  Precisely, as Mr. Fox afterwards remarked, as the swine with the evil spirits ran down the slope into the sea.