As the news of the spreading contagion reached her, so did Madam's terror and horror increase.

As her husband had said long since, she sat in rooms with closed windows and drawn curtains, burned fires large enough to roast an ox, and half poisoned herself with the drugs she daily swallowed, and which she would have forced upon her whole household had they not rebelled against being thus sickened.

As a natural consequence of her folly and ungovernable fears, Madam was never well, and was for ever discovering some new symptom which threw her into an ecstasy of terror.

She would wake in the night screaming out in uncontrollable fear that she had gotten the plague--that she felt a burning tumour here or there upon her person--that she was sinking away into a deadly swoon, or that something fatal was befalling her.

By day she would fall into like passions of fear, call out to her daughter to send for every physician whose name she had heard, and upbraid and revile her in the most unmeasured terms if the poor girl ventured to hint that the doctors were beginning to be tired of coming to listen to what always proved imaginary terrors.
The only times when husband or daughter enjoyed any peace was when Frederick chose to make his appearance at home.