"After this Prince Albert sang the '_Arndle-lied_,' '_Es ist ein schnitter_,' and then he said I must play him something before I went, and gave me as themes the chorale which he had played on the organ, and the song he had just sung. If everything had gone as usual I ought to have improvised dreadfully badly, for it is almost always so with me when I want it to go well, and then I should have gone away vexed with the whole morning. But just as if I were to keep nothing but the pleasantest, most charming recollection of it, I never improvised better; I was in the best mood for it, and played a long time, and enjoyed it myself so much that, besides the two themes, I brought in the songs that the Queen had sung quite naturally; and it all went off so easily, that I would gladly not have stopped; and they followed me with so much intelligence and attention, that I felt more at my ease than I ever did in improvising to an audience. The Queen said several times she hoped I would soon come to England again, and pay them a visit, and then I took leave; and down below I saw the beautiful carriages waiting, with their scarlet outriders, and in a quarter of an hour the flag was lowered, and the _Court Circular_ announced, 'Her Majesty left the palace at twenty minutes past three.'" The Queen and the Prince were enjoying the company of Prince Albert's brother, Prince Ernest, the hereditary Prince of Saxe-Coburg Gotha, and his newly-wedded wife, who were both with the Court during its short stay at _Claremont_. There the news reached her Majesty of the sad and sudden death of the Duc d'Orleans, the eldest son of Louis Philippe, and the favourite brother of the Queen of the Belgians. The Duc d'Orleans had been with the King and Queen of France at Neuilly, from which he was returning in order to join the Duchesse d'Orleans at Plombieres, when the horses in his carriage started off near the Porte Maillot. Fearing that he should be overturned the Prince rashly leaped out, when his spurs and his sword caught in his cloak and helped to throw him to the ground with great violence. The result was concussion of the brain, from which he died within three hours, never recovering consciousness. The Duc d'Orleans was a young man of great promise, and his death was not only a source of deep distress to all connected with him, it was in the end, so far as men can judge, fatal to the political interests of his family. Many of us can recollect still something of the agonised prayer of the poor mother by the dying Prince, "My God, take me, but save my child!" and the cry of the bereaved father, the first time he addressed the Chamber afterwards, when he broke down and could utter nothing save the passionate lamentation of David of old, "My son, my son!" The Queen and Prince Albert were doubly and trebly allied to the Orleans family by the marriages of the Queen of the Belgians, the Duc de Nemours, and later of Princess Clementine, to