A curious accident happened when the Queen prorogued Parliament on the 9th of August. The Duke of Argyle, an elderly man, was carrying the crown on a velvet cushion, when, in walking backwards before the Queen, he appeared to forget the two steps, leading from the platform on which the throne stands to the floor, and stumbled, the crown slipping from the cushion and falling to the ground, with the loss of some diamonds. The Queen expressed her concern for the Duke instead of for the crown; but on her departure the keeper of the House of Lords appeared in front of the throne, and prevented too near an approach to it, with the chance of further damage to the dropped jewels. The misadventure was naturally the subject of a good deal of private conversation in the House. CHAPTER III. THE QUEEN'S FIRST VISIT TO GERMANY. On the evening of the day that she prorogued Parliament, the Queen and the Prince with the Earl of Aberdeen as the minister in attendance, started from Buckingham Palace that she might pay her first visit to Germany. Surely none of all the new places she had visited within the last few years could have been of such surpassing interest to the traveller. It was her mother's country as well as her husband's, the home of her brother and sister, the place of which she must have heard, with which she must have had the kindliest associations from her earliest years. The first stage of the journey--in stormy weather, unfortunately--was to Antwerp, where the party did not land till the following day, when they proceeded to Malines, where they were met by King Leopold and Queen Louise, who parted from their royal niece at Verviers. On the Prussian frontier Lord Westmoreland, the English ambassador, and Baron Bunsen met her Majesty. "To hear the people speak German," she wrote in her Journal, "to see the German soldiers, seemed to me so singular. I overheard people saying that I looked very English." At Aix-la-Chapelle the King and Prince of Prussia received the visitors and accompanied them to Cologne. The ancient dirty town of the Three Kings gave the strangers an enthusiastic reception. The burghers even did their best to get rid of the unsavoury odours which distinguish the town of sweet essences, by pouring eau-de-Cologne on the roadways.