In March, 1884, the Duke of Albany went to Cannes in order to escape the spring east winds, leaving the Duchess, who was in a delicate state of health, behind him at Claremont. He appeared to profit by his stay of a few weeks in the south of France, was unusually well in health and in excellent spirits, entering generally into the society of the place. But on the 27th of March, in ascending a stair at the Cercle Nautique, he slipped and fell, injuring his ailing knee in a manner in which he had hurt it several times before. He was conveyed in a carriage to the Villa Nevada, at which he was residing, and no danger was apprehended, the Duke writing with his own hand to the Duchess, making light of the accident. During the following night, however, he was observed to breathe heavily, was found to be in a fit, and in a few minutes afterwards, early on the morning of the 28th of March, 1884, he died in the arms of his equerry, Captain Perceval. The melancholy news was telegraphed to Windsor, and broken to the Queen by the Master of her Household, Sir Henry Ponsonby. Under the shock and grief, with which the whole country sympathised, her Majesty's first and constant thought seems to have been for the young widow at desolate Claremont. The Prince of Wales started for Cannes, and accompanied the remains of his brother to England, the royal yacht _Osborne_ landing them at Portsmouth. On the arrival of the melancholy cavalcade at Windsor, on Friday, the 4th of April, the Queen went with her daughters, Princess Christian and Princess Beatrice, to the railway station to meet the body of the beloved son who had been the namesake of King Leopold, her second father, and the living image in character of the husband she had adored. The coffin was carried by a detachment of the Seaforth Highlanders through the room in which her Majesty awaited the procession, and conveyed to the chapel, where a short service was afterwards held in the presence of the Queen and the near relatives of the dead, and where the nearest of all, the widowed Duchess, paid one brief last visit to the bier. On the following day, Saturday, the 5th of April, towards noon, the funeral took place, with all the pomp of the late Prince's rank, and all the sorrow which his untimely end and many virtues might well call forth. The Prince of Wales, as chief mourner, was supported by the Crown Prince of Germany, the Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt, Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, Prince Albert Victor of Wales, and the Duke of Cambridge. The coffin, with its velvet pall nearly hidden by flowers, was again borne by a party of the Seaforth Highlanders to the solemn music of Chopin's "Funeral March" and the firing of the minute-guns, to the principal entrance of St. George's Chapel. Among the same company that had been assembled when the Duke of Albany had been married not two years before, were his father-in-law and sister-in- law, the Prince of Waldeck-Pyrmont, and the Queen of Holland.