Note 100 — Chapter IX
Reading edition
Many stories have been told of the deranged King having been brutally treated by this man Ernst, who is said on one occasion to have thrown the patient violently down, exclaiming to the attendants, ‘There is your King for you!’ But Ernst, who was a Page of the Back Stairs, received a pension on his retirement. It seems probable, therefore, that Ernst’s supposed brutality was, as Miss Burney suggests, an illusion of the King’s malady.