Queen we find her saying, “We are so pleased at your saying that you claim Louis as _your_ son. He always considers _himself_ in particular your child, and if anything helps to stimulate him in doing his duty well, it is the sincere wish of being worthy to claim and deserve that title.” And the Queen’s kindness was not confined to words. She gave him (Prince Louis) the charger that he rode during the war, and helped him in many ways. “That you sent Louis,” writes the Princess to her on the 16th of September, “besides the pretty souvenir, the money for something in the house, is really so kind. Our whole dining-room we consider your present, and it is furnished as like an English one as possible.” Lastly, when the war ended in the triumph of Prussia, and the Princess thought that she and her husband, to use her own phrase, would be made “beggars,” the Queen employed her potent influence at the Court of Berlin to procure favourable terms for Hesse-Darmstadt in the peace that followed. But for the Queen, the Grand Duchy would have been blotted out of the map of Germany as a sovereign State.[249] “We are so grateful,” says the Princess in one of her letters at this anxious moment in her husband’s life, “for your having written to good Fritz [the Crown Prince of Prussia]. What he _can_ do I know he will.” The eminent American merchant, Mr. Peabody, having added to his splendid gift of the preceding year for the improvements of the dwellings of the poor of London another munificent donation, her Majesty addressed to him the following autograph letter:-- “Windsor Castle, March 28, 1866. “The Queen hears that Mr. Peabody intends shortly to return to America, and she would be sorry that he should leave England without being assured by herself how deeply she appreciates the noble act of more than princely munificence by which he has sought to relieve the wants of the poorer class of her subjects residing in London. It is an act, as the Queen believes, wholly without parallel, and which will carry its best reward in the consciousness of having contributed so largely to the assistance of those who can little help themselves.