It is easy to be wise after the event. No one now can help seeing that it would have been the truest wisdom for the young Princess to have rigidly suppressed her natural tastes and intellectual interests, and to have led a life of the narrowly conventional character which Prussian princesses were expected to lead. But she was incapable of such self-suppression, which would have seemed to her deceitful, and the mild cautions and hints at prudence in her father's letters were pathetically inadequate to the needs of her critical position. She was herself still quite unaware of how closely she was being watched and criticised. "I am very happy," she told a guest at one of the Court receptions, "and I am intensely proud of belonging to this country." The more the Princess's social preferences aroused the suspicion and indignation of the Court world, the more popular she became with the "intellectuals," unfortunately not a profitable exchange for her as she was then situated. We become aware of this by a passage in the _Reminiscences_ of Professor Schellbach, who had been mathematical tutor to Prince Frederick William. He writes: "The first words which the Princess addressed to me with the greatest kindness were, 'I love mathematics, physics, and chemistry.' I was much pleased, for I saw that the Prince must have given her a pleasant account of me. Under the direction of her highly cultivated father, who had himself studied it, Princess Victoria had become acquainted with natural science, and had even received her first teaching from such famous men as Faraday and Hoffman. Our beloved Princess soon revealed her love for art and science, as well as her pleasure in setting problems of her own. Her Royal Highness at first tried to go on with her studies in physics and mathematics under my direction, but soon her artistic work took up the remainder of time which the requirements of Court life left to her." Early in June Prince Albert carried out his plan of visiting his daughter and son-in-law, but it was at Babelsberg, not at Coburg, as he had hoped. He was able to report to Queen Victoria: "The relation between the young people is all that can be desired. I have had long talks with them both, singly and together, which gave me the greatest satisfaction." Prince Albert was, however, shocked to find the King of Prussia in a terrible state: