After their return to Balmoral, the Prince wrote: "We should be happy here were it not for that horrible Eastern complication. A European war would be a terrible calamity. It will not do to give up all hope; still, what we have is small." It daily grew smaller, as the war-clouds thickened and darkened in the political sky. During those troublous times, when some men's hearts were failing them for fear, and some men's were madly panting for the fray, asking nothing better than to see the Lion of England pitted against the Bear of Russia, the Prince was in some quarters most violently and viciously assailed, as a designing, dangerous "influence behind the throne"--treacherous to England, and so to England's Queen. So industriously was this monstrous slander spread abroad, that the story went, and by some simple souls was believed, that "the blameless Prince" had been arrested for high treason, and lodged in the Tower! Some had it that he had gone in through the old Traitors' Grate, and that they were furbishing up the old axe and block for his handsome head! Then the rumor ran that the Queen had also been arrested, and was to be consigned to the grim old fortress, or that she insisted on going with her husband and sharing his dungeon. Thousands of English. people actually assembled about the Tower to see them brought in,--and yet this was not on All- Fools' Day. Poor Baron Stockmar was also suspected of dark political intrigues and practices detrimental to the peace and honor of England. He was, in fact, accused of being a spy and a conspirator--which was absurdity itself. He was, it seems to me, a high-minded, kindly old man, a political philosopher and moralist--rather opinionated always, and at times a little patronizing towards his royal pupils; but if they did not object to this, it was no concern of other people. He certainly had a shrewd, as well as a philosophic mind--was a sagacious "clerk of the weather" in European politics,--and I suppose a better friend man or woman never had than the Prince and the Queen found in this much distrusted old German Baron. Though Prince Albert wrote at this time about having "a world of torment," he really took matters very patiently and philosophically. In the devotion of his wife, in the affection of his children, in his beloved organ, "the only instrument," he said, "for expressing one's feelings," he found consolation and peace. He wrote,--"Victoria has taken the whole affair greatly to heart, and is excessively indignant at the attacks." But a triumphant refutation, in both Houses of Parliament, of all these slanders, consoled her much; and on the anniversary of her marriage she was able to write--"This blessed day is full of joyful and tender emotions. Fourteen happy years have passed, and I confidently trust many more will pass, and find us in old age, as we are now, happily and devotedly united! Trials we must have; but what are they if we are together?"