While these two were acting in this strange love scene, the three personages upon whom they were nominally in attendance were planning measures which were to overturn, in a few days, all that the halting diplomacy of the Emperor had built up in many months. The Queen, who had contrived to make of our Admiral her faithful Minister, urged the matter forward to force the head of her house, the Emperor, to make a decided movement and march his armies down into the Peninsula against the French. By his sending her a general she took it for granted that he meant to support her with his soldiers as soon as she began fighting, which seems to have been very far from his thoughts--a fact, of course, known to General Mack. But the latter had neither the honesty nor the capacity to give such a message to the beautiful and eager Queen, and allowed her to deceive herself. He trusted (now that Buonaparte was away in Egypt and without a fleet) to a French scuttle before the numbers of the Neapolitans, and the English ships, which threatened their land communications by the Riviera Road. Sir William might have taken a severer view, if indeed he was capable of taking any view at this time. Sir William was not a strong man. Having the good fortune to be the foster-brother of King George III., he was appointed to the Court of Naples, probably as a kind of sinecure, when the prospect of Naples becoming the key to the European situation seemed as remote as any earthly contingency. Possibly he had qualifications then; but, at all events, as he grew older, they disappeared, and he became, by the agency of his able and ambitious wife, a mere appendage to the Court of Naples. And now he was having one of his periodical visitations of the bilious fever, which had kept him from the Pompeian expedition (where his antiquarian knowledge would have been highly interesting to the Admiral) and the Queen's banquet. Being somewhat recovered, and the air of Caserta having so often proved beneficial during similar attacks, he had driven up in the morning, and, indeed, was so far recovered by night that he determined with the Queen and the Admiral to return to Naples on the following day. His improvement was maintained there. But as he grew older his attacks became longer and more difficult to shake off, and he was both averse to work and incapable of energy at the moment when opposition would have counted. By eight o'clock on the morning of the 12th the Court and all the guests had flitted, and they were in Naples in time for a very early midday meal, ordered by a courier sent overnight. For what follows I am indebted to the Admiral's own Journal, which is again borne out by facts within the personal knowledge and perfect memory of Will. * * * * *