That illness in its serious phases, lasted about two weeks. It was a low, slow fever, which at first was not recognized as fever at all, but only a heavy cold. I have been told that the Prince himself had from the first, an impression that he should not recover, and that he talked of his probable death very calmly with his noble daughter Alice, saying: "Your mother cannot bear to hear me speak of it yet." The Queen, though very restless and distressed, and at times shaken with wild alarms, could not face the coming calamity; could not admit the possibility that the sands of that precious life--golden sands, were running out. The alternations of hope and fear, must have been terrible. One morning the Queen records that on going to the Prince she found him looking very wretched: "He did not smile, or take much notice of me. His manner all along was so unlike himself, and he had sometimes, such a strange, wild look." In the evening she writes: "I found my Albert most dear and affectionate and quite himself, when I went in with little Beatrice, whom he kissed. He laughed at some of her new French verses which I made her repeat, then he. held her little hand in his for some time, and she stood looking, at him." For several days he wished to be read to, and the Queen and faithful Alice read his favorite authors; he also asked for music, and Alice played for him some fine German airs. He even wished often to look at a favorite picture, one of Raphael's Madonnas, saying, "It helps me through the day." At length the fever took on a typhoid form, congestion of the lungs set in, and there was no longer reason for hope,--though they did hope, till almost the last hour. Now, it seems that from the first, even when he did not apparently suffer, except from mortal weariness, there were little fatal indications. One morning he told the Queen that as he lay awake he heard the little birds outside, and "thought of those he used to hear at the Rosenau, in his childhood"; and on the last morning the Queen writes that he "began arranging his hair just as he used to do when well and he was dressing." It seemed to the poor Queen as though he were "preparing for another and a greater journey" than they had ever taken together. His tenderness towards her through all this sad fortnight, was very touching. It was not calculated to loosen the detaining, clinging clasp of her arms; but it must be very sweet for her to remember. After the weariness of watching, the prostration of fever, he welcomed always the good-morning caress of his "dear little wife." Through the gathering mists of unconsciousness, through the phantom-shades of delirium, his love for her struggled forth, in a tender word, a wistful look, a languid smile, a feeble stroking of the cheek. It was "wondrous pitiful," but it was very beautiful. Even at the last, when he knew no one else, he knew her; and when she bent over him and whispered, "Tis your own little wife," he bowed his head and kissed her.