At this period there was a good deal of enteric fever in Pretoria, and among the invalids, whose condition caused considerable anxiety, was Major Prince Christian Victor of Schleswig-Holstein.[14] Not that his state at the time was in the least critical, but interest hung around him because he was, first, the grandson of the Sovereign; second, because he was a gallant officer and a prince; and lastly, because he was before all things a delightful comrade, as popular as he was genial. His death, which did not occur till fighting had developed into guerilla warfare, was deplored by all who were acquainted with him; and also by the nation at large, who knew how to appreciate the devotion to duty of one who, though born in the purple, preferred to take his share of the country's work, and fight shoulder to shoulder with her defenders. His last wish was characteristic of his noble nature--he desired no royal resting-place, but elected to be buried "by the side of his comrades." On the 19th, in the grey of the dawn, Mr. Kruger slunk from South Africa on board the Dutch man-of-war _Gelderland_. With the utmost secrecy he was smuggled to sea to evade, not his foes the British, but his dupes the Boers, the luckless refugees who lusted for revenge on the man who had ruined their country, deceived, robbed, and deserted themselves. When he departed his moneybags were full! Theirs--his beloved people's--were empty! Rich, he fled to escape the consequence of his own inflated obstinancy; beggared, they remained to endure the brunt of it! Round the debased fugitive it was impossible to cast the smallest glamour of sentiment. The absence of all sense of honour and truth, the sordid ambition and personal greed of the man, exposed now to the full, deprived him of the sympathy of those who had formerly watched his remarkable career with interest and admiration. Hitherto, most people had been prone to believe that the President of the Transvaal was, as the patriarchs of old, narrow-minded and obstinate no doubt, but saved by a simplicity that was picturesque as it was primitive. The romantic were even wont to look on him as another Cromwell of the English--a new Hofer of the Tyrolese--a brawny moral giant, to wonder at and revere. But, gradually, the massive peasant became transformed into the pinchbeck potentate, a despot with never an inkling of statesmanship to redeem the unctious sophistries and hypocritical cant with which he attempted to blind the world and himself. Now, it was impossible for his admirers to ignore the clay feet of their idol, and his compatriots, many of them, were forced to realise that his character, like the bar gold he paid to his creditors, was little more than a delusive show of amalgam. His last evasion declared that he had received "six months' leave of absence for the benefit of his health." So let it remain--a crumbling rung on the long ladder of his duplicity. There was more truth in the fabrication than he recked of.