“_December 12._--Dolphus brought us a very hopeless telegram from Alice: ‘Night restless, very delirious, no signs of improvement.’ After a while I went to my room and read the papers with accounts from Sandringham and Windsor.… “_December 13._--… To Mama’s _entrée_, where I found her, Gussy, and Tante much upset over a very disquieting message from Alice, which said, ‘Night without rest. No important change in the general state. Breathing is weak. Anxiety increased.’ One can only look to God’s great mercy for further hope! “_December 14._--… Bülow congratulated me on the better accounts which had just been received from Sandringham! It was the first I had heard of it; just at that moment Wenckstern appeared with the telegram: ‘Quiet sleep at intervals, gravity of symptoms diminished, state more hopeful.--Alice.’ God be thanked for this blessed change!… I read aloud in Mama’s room, amid tears and sobs, the touching account in the _Daily Telegraph_ of our dear Wales’s illness, of all that goes on at Sandringham, of the prayers for him and the sermons preached about him. “_December 15._--A much more hopeful telegram from Alice, as follows: ‘Bertie has passed a quiet night. The debility is great, but the conditions are much more favourable.’ Thank God for this great mercy.” The feeling aroused through the United Kingdom was far greater than any public expression of emotion since the death of Princess Charlotte in 1817. In every town, crowds waited anxiously for the issue of newspapers containing the latest news of the Royal patient’s condition, and the Government found it expedient to forward the medical bulletins to every telegraph office in the United Kingdom. In the churches of every religious communion, prayers were offered, though almost without hope, for the recovery of King Edward. At length, on 1st December, the King recovered consciousness, and his first remark to those about him was, “This is the Princess’s birthday.” The next coherent utterance came when he heard that Queen Victoria had been at Sandringham. “Has the Queen come from Scotland? Does she know I am ill?” he asked; but this slight rally did not continue, and soon all the Royal family were summoned to Sandringham. On 9th December the fever had spent itself, but the patient’s strength was considered to be exhausted. Special prayers were offered up in all churches; and shortly before the service in St. Mary Magdalene’s, Sandringham, the Vicar received the following note from Queen Alexandra:-- “My husband being, thank God, somewhat better, I am coming to church. I must leave, I fear, before the service is concluded, that I may watch by his bedside. Can you not say a few words in prayer in the early part of the service, that I may join with you in prayer for my husband before I return to him?”