at. From behind the vast solidity of her respectability, her
conventionality, her established happiness, she peered out with a
strange delicious pleasure at that unfamiliar, darkly-glittering foreign
object, moving so meteorically before her, an ambiguous creature of
wilfulness and Destiny. And, to her surprise, where she had dreaded
antagonisms, she discovered only sympathies. He was, she said, "so
quiet, so simple, naif even, so pleased to be informed about things he
does not know, so gentle, so full of tact, dignity, and modesty, so full
of kind attention towards us, never saying a word, or doing a thing,
which could put me out... There is something fascinating, melancholy,
and engaging which draws you to him, in spite of any prevention you may
have against him, and certainly without the assistance of any outward
appearance, though I like his face." She observed that he rode
"extremely well, and looks well on horseback, as he sits high." And
he danced "with great dignity and spirit." Above all, he listened to
Albert; listened with the most respectful attention; showed, in fact,
how pleased he was "to be informed about things he did not know;" and
afterwards was heard to declare that he had never met the Prince's
equal. On one occasion, indeed--but only on one--he had seemed to grow
slightly restive. In a diplomatic conversation, "I expatiated a little
on the Holstein question," wrote the Prince in a memorandum, "which
appeared to bore the Emperor as 'tres compliquee.'"

Victoria, too, became much attached to the Empress, whose looks and
graces she admired without a touch of jealousy. Eugenie, indeed, in
the plenitude of her beauty, exquisitely dressed in wonderful Parisian
crinolines which set off to perfection her tall and willowy figure,
might well have caused some heart-burning in the breast of her hostess,
who, very short, rather stout, quite plain, in garish middle-class
garments, could hardly be expected to feel at her best in such company.
But Victoria had no misgivings. To her it mattered nothing that her
face turned red in the heat and that her purple pork-pie hat was of last
year's fashion, while Eugenie, cool and modish, floated in an infinitude
of flounces by her side. She was Queen of England, and was not that
enough? It certainly seemed to be; true majesty was hers, and she knew
it. More than once, when the two were together in public, it was the
woman to whom, as it seemed, nature and art had given so l