The real tragedy of the Crown Princess's life surely lies in these years of waiting. She could not--assuredly she did not--for a moment wish that the old Emperor should die. She had nursed him devotedly during the long illness caused by Nobeling's attempted assassination, and it is a significant fact that she alone had been able to persuade the stern old soldier to leave his hard camp bed for a soft invalid couch. She knew as well as anyone the Emperor's noble qualities, and she cherished for him a warm and filial affection. Yet it was patent, especially to all those who shared the strong political and constitutional opinions of the Crown Princess, that the aged Sovereign had outlived his usefulness to his country. She could not help being conscious that in her husband, and in herself, too, there lay, capacities of national service of which William I and his consort had never dreamed. If the word "disappointment" is used of the Crown Princess's long-deferred hopes, it was in no sense the baulking of any commonplace ambition. The tragedy lay in the failure of the pure and single-hearted dedication of her husband and herself to bettering the lot of those vast, silent millions on whose pains and toil the pomp of thrones and empires, the exquisite refinements of civilisation, the discoveries of science, and the delights of art and literature, seemed to her to be all ultimately based. The sympathies of one of the most warm-hearted women who ever lived were thus continually torn and divided, for, while it seemed to her loyal nature an act of treachery to look forward to the old Emperor's death, she was continually being reminded, by the demeanour of those about her, that that event, which would so entirely transform her position, was expected almost daily. In the midst of this subtle mental and spiritual conflict, the Crown Princess was struck by yet another arrow from the quiver of fate, inflicting an anguish of anxiety which even her bitterest enemies would surely have wished her to be spared. In April, 1886, the Crown Prince suffered from a severe attack of measles, which probably left him in a weakened state, as this disease is apt to do when it attacks a man over fifty. However, he was thought to have recovered sufficiently to visit the King and Queen of Italy on the Riviera in the autumn, and it was there, while out driving, that the Prince caught a severe cold, which brought on an affection of the throat. The Princess herself undertook, with great efficiency, the chief responsibility of nursing the patient. But the throat affection did not yield to treatment, and the terrible suspicion that it might never so yield must often have assailed the Princess, even in these early months of her husband's illness. But she did not betray the anxiety gnawing at her heart; on the contrary, she showed throughout a gallant optimism which, as we now look back on it, seems intensely pathetic.