By eight o’clock, or a little after, for she is extremely expeditious, she is dressed.  She then goes out to join the king, and be joined by the princesses, and they all proceed to the king’s chapel in the Castle, to prayers, attended by the governesses of the princesses, and the king’s equerry.  Various others at times attend, but only these indispensably.

I then return to my own room to breakfast.  I make this meal the most pleasant part of the day; I have a book for my

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companion, and I allow myself an hour for it.  At nine O’clock I send off my breakfast things, and relinquish my book, to make a serious and steady examination of everything I have upon my hands in the way of business-in which preparations for dress are always included, not for the present day alone, but for the Court-days, which require a particular dress; for the next arriving birthday of any of the royal family, every one of which requires new apparel; for Kew, where the dress is plainest; and for going on here, where the dress very pleasant to me, requiring no shew nor finery, but merely to be neat, not inelegant, and moderately fashionable.

That over, I have my time at my own disposal till a quarter before twelve, except on Wednesdays and Saturdays, when I have it only to a quarter before eleven.  My rummages and business sometimes occupy me uninterruptedly to those hours.  When they do not, I give till ten to necessary letters of duty, ceremony, or long arrears ;-and now, from ten to the times I have mentioned, I devote to walking.  These times mentioned call me to the irksome and quick-returning labours of the toilette.  The hour advanced on the Wednesdays and Saturdays is for curling and craping the hair, which it now requires twice a week.

A quarter before one is the usual time for the queen to begin dressing for the day.  Mrs. Schwellenberg then constantly attends; so do I; Mrs. Thielky, of course, at all times.  We help her off with her gown, and on with her powdering things, and then the hair-dresser is admitted.  She generally reads the newspaper during that operation.

When she observes that I have run to her but half dressed, she constantly gives me leave to return and finish -as soon as she is seated.  If she is grave, and reads steadily on, she dismisses me, whether I am dressed or not; but at all times she never forgets to send me away while she is powdering, with a consideration not to spoil my clothes, that one would not expect belonged to her high station.  Neither does she ever detain me without making a point of reading here and there some little paragraph aloud.

When I return, I finish, if anything is undone, my dress, and then take Baretti’s “Dialogues,” my dearest Fredy’s “Tablet of Memory,” or some such disjointed matter, for the few minutes that elapse ere I am again summoned.

I find her then always removed to her state dressing-room. if any room in this private mansion can have the epithet of 347