and were enthusiastically cheered the whole way from the South Eastern to the Great Western terminus.... On going up St. James’s Street, the Emperor was seen to point out to the Empress the house where he formerly lived in King Street. This was at once understood by the crowd, who cheered louder than ever. On passing the Horse Guards the Emperor stood up in his carriage and saluted the colours, and was of course immensely cheered.”[226] At Windsor the excitement was intense, and the Queen was on tiptoe of expectation. Referring to the arrival of the visitors, she writes, “I cannot say what indescribable emotions filled me--how much all seemed like a wonderful dream. These great meetings of sovereigns, surrounded by very exciting accompaniments, are always very agitating.”[227] Her Majesty advanced and the Emperor kissed her hand. She saluted him once on each cheek, and then, as she says, “embraced the very gentle, very graceful, and evidently very nervous Empress.” The Duke of Cambridge and the Prince of Leiningen and the Royal children were presented--“Vicky (now Princess Imperial of Germany) with very alarmed eyes making very low curtesies.” In the Throne Room other presentations followed. At dinner, however, the Emperor put the Queen quite at her ease. He assumed the soft, low voice and the melancholy manner of the hero of some romance of mystery. They talked about the war--the Queen gently dissuading him from going to the Crimea, he mournfully expressing his apprehension of disasters unless he went out, and complaining of the blunders of the generals. Next morning (the 17th) the subject was renewed during a long walk after breakfast. This time the Empress was eager in pressing the Emperor to proceed to Sebastopol, where, she said with truth, he was perhaps safer than in Paris. In the afternoon the Royal Family and their Imperial guests reviewed the Household troops, surrounded by gay crowds, full of effusive enthusiasm for our Allies. At dinner they discussed the manifold iniquities of Austria, and mourned over her decadence, because she would not fight to vindicate a plan for reducing the Russian navy in the Black Sea to six ships instead of eight. At night there was a ball in the Waterloo Room--an odd place in which to find the granddaughter of George III. dancing with the nephew of Napoleon I. The sombre memories of the hall, however, did not prevent the Queen’s guest from dancing, as she herself records, “with great dignity and spirit.” Next morning (the 18th) at breakfast the Emperor received a telegram announcing the death of M. Ducos, the Minister of Marine,[228] and at eleven o’clock a grand Council of War was held in the Emperor’s rooms, at which those present were Prince Albert, Lords Palmerston, Panmure, Hardinge, and Cowley, Sir Charles Wood, Sir John Burgoyne, Count Walewski, and Marshal Vaillant. “Something should be done somewhere, and by somebody in the Crimea,” seems to have been the resolution to which the council came.