General Grey expressed his satisfaction with what I said, and, no doubt, lost no time in informing the Queen of its import. However this might be, from that moment I was treated with unreserved confidence, and the conditions for which I had stipulated were fully and frankly kept throughout all my labours. In General Grey I found a cordial friend. He paid me the compliment of asking my assistance in finally seeing through the press the work, _The Early Years of the Prince Consort_, on which he was then engaged, and which was soon afterwards published. It had been originally intended that my work should begin where his left off. But as I went on with my studies I found that, to make my biography coherent and complete, I must go over the ground General Grey had already gone over, and treat its incidents in my own way, and with a view to my plan for the further narrative of the Prince's life. As I look back on my correspondence with the Queen, it gratifies me to see how early Her Majesty's letters had passed from formal reserve into a strain of confidential friendliness. Thus in a letter of December 18, 1867, she writes, "The Queen thanks Mr Martin for his two kind letters," and invites him to Osborne for two or three days, where he will meet M. Silvain van de Weyer, "a great and intimate friend of the dear Prince, a man of great cultivation of mind and of the kindest heart, and who will give Mr Martin many useful hints about the Prince's character." This meeting led to an unbroken friendship with the singularly gifted man so well described by Her Majesty. From him I learned much that was of service to my immediate purpose in depicting the early part of the Prince's life. He had been so completely behind the scenes also in all the political movements of the time, that I hoped to have the benefit of his knowledge in dealing with the subsequent years as well. But this was not to be. To my infinite regret, he died before the first volume of the Life was published;[1] but he read the proof-sheets of the greater part of it, and I was greatly encouraged by the warmth of his approval. In the same letter the Queen goes on to say: "The Queen is reading Mr Martin's _Correggio_,[2] of which she used to hear her governess, the Baroness Lehzen, so often speak. Would he let her have a copy to send to the Baroness?" "This day," the letter adds, "has been splendid--a cloudless blue sky, and equally blue sea, with the purest air. But when the Queen awoke this morning her heart felt _sick_, as she knew how her darling husband would have enjoyed such a day in his beloved Osborne, and she yearned for one hour of former happiness."