Queen Victoria showed the most vivid interest in all her eldest son’s many and varied adventures. Both Her Majesty and the Prince Consort were very much gratified by the way in which the Duke of Newcastle had performed his arduous and delicate task, and, after some consultation, it was decided that the Queen should publicly mark her satisfaction by conferring upon the Duke the Order of the Garter. CHAPTER VI DEATH OF THE PRINCE CONSORT--TOUR IN THE EAST King Edward’s visit to Germany in the autumn of 1861 is explained by Sir Theodore Martin, in his _Life of the Prince Consort_, to have been made with another object in view besides that of seeing the military manœuvres in the Rhenish Provinces. It had been arranged that he was to make the acquaintance of the Princess Alexandra of Denmark, who was then on a visit to Germany, with a view to a marriage, should the meeting result in a mutual attachment. In spite, however, of every precaution to ensure secrecy, until at least the inclinations of the principal parties should have been ascertained, the project leaked out, and even before they met, it was actually canvassed, much to the Prince Consort’s annoyance, in the Continental papers. From these it soon found its way into the English journals, where it met with general approval; but as the meeting, which took place at Speier and Heidelberg on the 24th and 25th of September, ended with the happiest results, no harm was done, though in other circumstances it might have been extremely painful. “We hear nothing but excellent accounts of the Princess Alexandra,” Prince Albert notes in his diary on the 30th of September, and he adds, with evident satisfaction, that “the young people seem to have taken a warm liking for each other.” On 6th October the Prince Consort, writing to the King of Prussia, says: “Bertie has come back in raptures with his excursion to the manœuvres, and cannot speak sufficiently highly of your kindness to himself, and to all the English officers.” About a week later the Prince Consort was able to write to Baron Stockmar: “The Prince of Wales leaves to-morrow for Cambridge. He came back greatly pleased with his interview with the Princess of Holstein at Speier.… His present wish, after his time at the University is up, which it will be at Christmas, is to travel; and we have gladly assented to his proposal to visit the Holy Land. This, under existing circumstances, is the most useful tour he can make, and will occupy him till early in June.”