"This mischanceful Accident sorting so ill, to the great prejudice of the rest of our Proceedings," Davison reports, "was a great Discouragement and Disparagement to our whole State." (11) At the center of this calamity was the difficulty faced by the ambassador's retinue in literally trying to pass around impediments, and this knock-kneed series of detours epitomizes both of the night's derailed "Proceedings" and of how the festival season itself stumbled onward.