The Duke of Newcastle, who was a valued friend of the Prince Consort,, had a quiet conversation with her Majesty early in January, before she left Windsor for Osborne. “His account of the Queen,” writes Mr. Hayward in a letter to Lady Emily Peel, “is highly favourable. He said his private interview left him with the very highest opinion of her strength of character.”[114] After retiring to Osborne, however, nervous exhaustion seriously impaired her strength. Lady Ely told Lord Malmesbury that during the first weeks at Osborne her Majesty seemed very low and wretched. “She (Lady Ely),” writes Lord Malmesbury on the 4th of February, 1862, “gives a sad report of the poor Queen, who talks continually about the Prince, and seems to feel comfort in doing so. She takes great pleasure in the universal feeling of sympathy for her and sorrow for him shown by all classes.”[115] King Leopold of Belgium came to Osborne in the end of January, and he endeavoured by his good offices to bring about an arrangement with Lord Palmerston for facilitating the transaction of Ministerial business with the Queen. At that time her health was not actually bad. But the King of the Belgians said that though she was outwardly composed she was not equal to the strain of dining at table, even with her half-sister, the Princess Hohenlohe, and with Prince Louis of Hesse, who were then at Osborne. She seems to have desired no other companionship in the first weeks of her widowhood save that of the Princess Alice.