Perhaps his gratification at having attained this position may have lent a roseate tint to his view of the felicity of the Royal couple, which he paints in rapturous terms, saying that nothing was so great as their love--except the British National Debt. There is, however, no reason to doubt that the union of Leopold and Charlotte was one of the happy exceptions to the general character of Royal marriages. Its tragic end plunged a nation into mourning. Stockmar, with a prudence on which perhaps he reflects with a little too much satisfaction, refused to have anything to do with the treatment of the Princess from the commencement of her pregnancy. He thought he detected mistakes on the part of the English physicians, arising from the custom then prevalent in England of lowering the strength of the expectant mother by bleeding, aperients, and low diet, a regimen which was carried on for months. The Princess, in fact, having been delivered of a dead son after a fifty hours' labour, afterwards succumbed to weakness. It fell to Stockmar's lot to break the news to the Prince, who was overwhelmed with sorrow. At the moment of his desolation Leopold exacted from Stockmar a promise that he would never leave him. Stockmar gave the promise, indulging at the same time his sceptical vein by expressing in a letter to his sister his doubt whether the Prince would remain of the same mind. This scepticism however did not interfere with his devotion. "My health is tolerable, for though I am uncommonly shaken, and shall be yet more so by the sorrow of the Prince, still I feel strong enough, even stronger than I used to be. I only leave the Prince when obliged by pressing business. I dine alone with him and sleep in his room. Directly he wakes in the night I get up and sit talking by his bedside till he falls asleep again. I feel increasingly that unlooked for trials are my portion in life, and that there will be many more of them before life is over. I seem to be here more to care for others than for myself, and I am well content with this destiny."