In the same letter the Prince writes, “Prince Fritz William comes here to-morrow evening. I have received a very friendly letter from the Princess of Prussia.” This, says Sir Theodore Martin, made Stockmar’s heart beat fast. He was the recognised matrimonial agent of the House of Coburg, and one of his cherished projects was to arrange a marriage between the young and handsome heir of the Prince of Prussia and the Princess Royal, who, of all the Queen’s children, was in an especial degree his favourite. The young Prussian Prince was indeed the only possible suitor in Europe whose prospects rendered him worthy to mate with a daughter of England. The Queen felt that the day would come when he would be Heir-Apparent not to the Crown of Prussia, but to the Imperial Throne of the German Empire. His family was one of the wealthiest in Europe. His father, afterwards the German Emperor, was a very dear and valued friend of the Queen and her husband, and the young Prince Fritz himself had all those qualities of mind and heart which Prince Albert desired to see in the husband of his eldest child. But the affair was one of some delicacy, because the Queen abhorred the idea of what she called “a political marriage;” indeed, as she was on somewhat unfriendly terms with the King of Prussia, and as Prussia was hated and despised by the English people at the time, the alliance was, from a political point of view, far from desirable. Her Majesty, moreover, had no intention of sanctioning any engagement which might be objectionable to her daughter, and the ultimate decision, therefore, lay with the Princess herself, who at the time knew nothing of the hopes or fears that centred round her. The gossip of Society had connected her name with that of Prince Frederick William. But on the Queen’s return from France at the end of August Prince Albert told Lord Clarendon there was no truth in these rumours.[243] On the 20th of September the Prince laid his proposal of marriage before the Queen and her husband, and they accepted it so far as they were concerned, but asked him not to speak to the Princess on the subject till after her confirmation. The Princess was only sixteen years of age at the time, and the Queen was of opinion that there should be no thought of marriage till the following spring, when her daughter would have passed her seventeenth birthday. On the 23rd Prince Albert writes to Stockmar, telling him that “Victoria is greatly excited. Still, all goes smoothly and prudently,” and that the young Prince is “really in love” with the little lady, “who does her best to please him.” The Crown Prince and Princess of Prussia, he says, “are in raptures at the turn the affair has taken.” But when a handsome young Prince is “really in love” with a charming young Princess who “does her best to please him,” and they are both living in the free, unrestrained intercourse of English family life in a romantic Highland