rendered very nervous because Prince Albert had to make a complimentary speech in reply to the toast of her health, for at that moment every eye in Europe was on Cherbourg, and every ear straining for echoes of Royal and Imperial conversations on which might hang the dread issues of war. “I shook so,” writes the Queen, “that I could not drink my cup of coffee.”[31] All went off well, however, and the kindliest words on both sides were spoken. The display of 25,000 francs’ worth of fireworks ended a brilliant but fatiguing day. August 6th was devoted to leave-taking, amidst a complimentary cannonade, and the Queen got home in time to greet Prince Alfred on his birthday at Osborne. “The evening,” she writes, “was very warm and calm. Dear Affie was on the pier, and we found all the other children, including Baby (Princess Beatrice), standing at the door.” A visit of inspection to Prince Alfred’s birthday presents, a little birthday fête and dance on the terrace, adds the Queen, formed “a delightful finale to our expedition.”[32] But the visit was a mistake, though, as the Ministry insisted on it, the blame was theirs alone. It produced an abundant crop of alarms and attacks in the press on the menacing preparations for war which had been seen at Cherbourg. It caused the Queen to have a controversy with Lord Derby, who would pay no heed to her appeal to provide a counterpoise to the threatening stronghold which she had inspected. A visit--long promised and long looked for--to the Prince and Princess Frederick William of Prussia followed. Her Majesty’s suite arrived at Potsdam on the 14th of August, and on the same evening the Queen and Prince Albert arrived at Babelsberg, where they were received with a warmth of welcome by their Prussian relatives that made the Queen, as she herself says, feel as if she were at home. The meeting between her and her daughter brought a moment of supreme delight to both. Each day spent in the happy circle of the Prince and Princess of Prussia seems to have knit the heart of the Queen closer to the family of which her eldest daughter was so obviously a cherished member. Every day some fresh mark of attention was paid to the Queen and her husband by their hosts, who seemed to exhaust their ingenuity in devising expedients for making her visit pleasant to her. Though this visit was purely a private one, the people gave her as cordial a reception as the Court, until at last her Majesty began to feel sad at the approaching termination of such a charming holiday. But on the 28th of August the last day came, and, writes the Prince Consort, “the parting was very painful.” The Queen and the Princess Royal wept in each other’s arms, though her Majesty says, with a pathetic reference to the conflicting duties of sovereignty and womanhood, “all would be comparatively easy were it not for the one thought that I cannot be with her at that very critical moment when every mother goes to her child.”[33] Dover was reached on