r guide or dictate TO ME.
I know HOW he would disapprove it... Though miserably weak and utterly
shattered, my spirit rises when I think ANY wish or plan of his is to
be touched or changed, or I am to be MADE TO DO anything." She ended her
letter in grief and affection. She was, she said, his "ever wretched but
devoted child, Victoria R." And then she looked at the date: it was the
24th of December. An agonising pang assailed her, and she dashed down a
postcript--"What a Xmas! I won't think of it."

At first, in the tumult of her distresses, she declared that she could
not see her Ministers, and the Princess Alice, assisted by Sir Charles
Phipps, the keeper of the Privy Purse, performed, to the best of her
ability, the functions of an intermediary. After a few weeks, however,
the Cabinet, through Lord John Russell, ventured to warn the Queen that
this could not continue. She realised that they were right: Albert would
have agreed with them; and so she sent for the Prime Minister. But when
Lord Palmerston arrived at Osborne, in the pink of health, brisk, with
his whiskers freshly dyed, and dressed in a brown overcoat, light grey
trousers, green gloves, and blue studs, he did not create a very good
impression.

Nevertheless, she had grown attached to her old enemy, and the thought
of a political change filled her with agitated apprehensions. The
Government, she knew, might fall at any moment; she felt she could not
face such an eventuality; and therefore, six months after the death of
the Prince, she took the unprecedented step of sending a private message
to Lord Derby, the leader of the Opposition, to tell him that she was
not in a fit state of mind or body to undergo the anxiety of a change of
Government, and that if he turned the present Ministers out of office it
would be at the risk of sacrificing her life--or her reason. When this
message reached Lord Derby he was considerably surprised. "Dear me!" was
his cynical comment. "I didn't think she was so fond of them as THAT."

Though the violence of her perturbations gradually subsided, her
cheerfulness did not return. For months, for years, she continued in
settled gloom. Her life became one of almost complete seclusion. Arrayed
in thickest crepe, she passed dolefully from Windsor to Osborne, from
Osborne to Balmoral. Rarely visiting the capital, refusing to take any
part in the ceremonies of state, shutting herself off from the slightest
intercourse with society, s