At first it had been said, the Prince had a feverish cold; presently the bulletin announced "fever, unattended with unfavourable symptoms." It was gastric fever, and before long there _were_ unfavourable symptoms--pallid changes in the aspect, hurried breathing, wandering senses--all noted with heart-breaking anxiety by the loving nurses, the Queen and Princess Alice--the daughter so tender and beloved, the "dear little wife," the "good little wife," whose ministerings were so comfortable to the sufferer overwearied with the great burden of life. He was released from it at ten minutes to eleven on the night of Saturday, December 14th; and there fell on her to whom his last conscious look had been turned, his last caress given, a burden of woe almost unspeakable, and for which the heart of the nation throbbed with well-nigh unbearable sympathy. Seldom has the personal grief of a sovereign been so keenly shared by subjects. Indeed, they had cause to lament; the removal of the Prince Consort, just when his faculties seemed ripest and his influence most assured, left a blank in the councils of the nation which has never been filled up. "We have buried our _king_" said Mr. Disraeli, regretting profoundly this national loss; but for once the English people forgot the public deprivation in compassionating her who was left more conspicuously lonely, more heavily burdened, than even the poor bereaved colliers' wives in the North for whom _her_ compassion was so quick and so sharply sympathetic. Something remorseful mingled then, and may mingle now, with the affection felt for this lost benefactor, who had not only been somewhat jealously eyed by certain classes on his first coming, but who had suffered much silently from misunderstanding and also from deliberate misrepresentation, and only by patient continuance in well-doing had at last won the favour which was his rightful due. "That which we have we prize not to the worth While we enjoy it; but being lacked and lost, Why, then we rack the value, then we find The virtue that possession would not show us While it was ours." A peculiar tenderness was ever after cherished for Princess Alice, who in this dark hour rose up to be her mother's comforter, endeavouring in every way possible to save her all trouble--"all communications from the Ministers and household passed through the Princess's hands to the Queen, then bowed down with grief.... It was the very intimate intercourse with the sorrowing Queen at that time which called forth in Princess Alice that keen interest and understanding in politics for which she was afterwards so distinguished. The gay, bright girl suddenly developed into a wise, far-seeing woman, living only for others." [Illustration: Princess Alice.]