Meanwhile Victoria had made a new friend: she had suddenly been captivated by Napoleon III. Her dislike of him had been strong at first. She considered that he was a disreputable adventurer who had usurped the throne of poor old Louis Philippe; and besides he was hand-in-glove with Lord Palmerston. For a long time, although he was her ally, she was unwilling to meet him; but at last a visit of the Emperor and Empress to England was arranged. Directly he appeared at Windsor her heart began to soften. She found that she was charmed by his quiet manners, his low, soft voice, and by the soothing simplicity of his conversation. The good-will of England was essential to the Emperor's position in Europe, and he had determined to fascinate the Queen. He succeeded. There was something deep within her which responded immediately and vehemently to natures that offered a romantic contrast with her own. Her adoration of Lord Melbourne was intimately interwoven with her half-unconscious appreciation of the exciting unlikeness between herself and that sophisticated, subtle, aristocratical old man. Very different was the quality of her unlikeness to Napoleon; but its quantity was at least as great. From behind the vast solidity of her respectability, her conventionality, her established happiness, she peered out with a strange delicious pleasure at that unfamiliar, darkly-glittering foreign object, moving so meteorically before her, an ambiguous creature of wilfulness and Destiny. And, to her surprise, where she had dreaded antagonisms, she discovered only sympathies. He was, she said, 'so quiet, so simple, _naïf_ even, so pleased to be informed {199} about things he does not know, so gentle, so full of tact, dignity, and modesty, so full of kind attention towards us, never saying a word, or doing a thing, which could put me out ... There is something fascinating, melancholy, and engaging, which draws you to him, in spite of any _prévention_ you may have against him, and certainly without the assistance of any outward appearance, though I like his face.' She observed that he rode 'extremely well, and looks well on horseback, as he sits high.' And he danced 'with great dignity and spirit.' Above all, he listened to Albert; listened with the most respectful attention; showed, in fact, how pleased he was 'to be informed about things he did not know'; and afterwards was heard to declare that he had never met the Prince's equal. On one occasion, indeed--but only on one--he had seemed to grow slightly restive. In a diplomatic conversation, 'I expatiated a little on the Holstein question,' wrote the Prince in a memorandum, 'which appeared to bore the Emperor as "très-compliquée"'[22]