One night I happened to be sitting in a stall near his omnibus box. The King came in and sat down in his usual corner place. I noticed that he was looking very tired and worn. He sat through one act, all alone in the box. Then he got up, and I heard him give a great sigh. He opened the door of the box, lingered for a little in the doorway, with a very sad expression in his face—so unlike himself—took a last look at the house, and then went out. I never saw him again. At the end of the week, on the 30th of April, he went down to Sandringham to superintend some work, and I had been bidden to hold myself in readiness to go with him, as I so often did on those occasions. But when the time came he was feeling ill and out of sorts, and so he only took with him Sir Dighton Probyn and the Equerry-in-Waiting. The cold wind gave the _coup de grâce_ and he only came back to London to die. Ill as he was when he reached Buckingham Palace, he worked with all his accustomed energy, and on the Wednesday, when one of the permanent heads of the Civil Service was with him, he was seized with one of those terrible choking fits of coughing. When he got better his visitor ventured to remonstrate with him, and begged him to rest, and even go to bed, but he ridiculed the idea and said, “No, I shall not give in—I shall work to the end. Of what use is it to be alive if one cannot work.” That was how he fulfilled his declaration to the Privy Council on his accession, that “so long as there was breath in his body he would work for the good and amelioration of his people.” The King loved England. He was a patriot in the highest, I had almost said the divinest sense of the word. Queen Mary Tudor said that when she died the word CALAIS would be found written upon her heart. When King Edward died the word would have been ENGLAND. This leads me once more to the King’s untiring power of work. His method differed entirely from that of Queen Victoria, and this last interview of his with a permanent civil servant well shows how his industry took another shape from hers. As I have already said, the Queen worked entirely at her desk; she was an indefatigable writer and would alter and revise the drafts of her ministers freely—often with great effect—as for instance in the case of Lord Russell’s Foreign Office despatches. But I suppose that few sovereigns have been less in personal contact with her ministers, with the single exception of Lord Beaconsfield, than Queen Victoria was after the defeat of Lord Melbourne, who up to that time had been always at her side as a confidential adviser as well as responsible minister. But of the permanent officials she personally made no use. She never sent for them or consulted them, and I much doubt whether she knew the heads even of the Foreign Office or Treasury by sight. The chapter of accidents alone made me an exception to the rule.