It is shocking to have to record an example of the prejudice which was even then still felt in certain circles in Germany against the bereaved Crown Princess. A minister of the sect who called themselves the Orthodox Protestants, when he heard of the death of the young Prince, observed that he hoped it was a trial sent by God to humiliate her hard heart. This monstrous utterance must have found its way into print, or to the ears of some singularly ill-advised human being, for the Princess came to know of it, and in her then state of anguish it gave her more pain than perhaps even the minister himself would have wished to inflict. It was natural that the mother's heart should at this moment turn with keen anxiety to her son, Prince Henry, who was then serving abroad in a German warship. She imagined him in the midst of all sorts of perils, and she begged the Emperor to allow him to return home at once. But the Sovereign, though expressing kindly sympathy, was obliged, in view of the rigid rules of the service, to refuse her petition, and the Princess had to bear as best she could this addition to her burden. At this time the Crown Princess's relations with Bismarck had undergone some improvement. On February 23, 1879, Bismarck gave to Busch a most unflattering picture of the old Emperor, but he described the Crown Princess as unaffected and sincere, like her husband, "which her mother-in-law is not." He observed that it was only family considerations (the Coburger and the Augustenburger more than the uncle in Hanover) that made the Crown Princess troublesome, formerly more so than at present. "But she is honourable and has no pretensions." It was thought that the Crown Princess was sadly in need of mental change and refreshment after the two terrible blows which had deprived her of her child and of her sister. She, therefore, went to stay in Rome _incognito_ during the April of 1880, being only attended by a lady-in-waiting and her "chambellan." To those of her English friends whom she happened to meet she spoke constantly of her dead son, saying that he had been the most promising of her children, and that she felt as if she could never be resigned to her loss. In answer to a kindly suggestion that she had so many duties to perform that she would soon be taken out of herself, she said: "Ah, yes, there is much to do and one cannot sit down with one's sorrow, but the mother who has lost her child carries a heavy heart all her life."