'At Havre I got to know King Jerome, father to "Plon-Plon" and father- in-law to my friend Princess Clothilde, and was duly interested in this last of the brothers of Napoleon. The ex-King of Westphalia was a wicked old gentleman; but he did not let a boy find this out, and he was courteous and talkative. We long had in both years, I think, the next rooms to his at Frascati's; and he used to walk in the garden with me, finding me a good listener. The old Queen of Sweden was still alive, and he told me how Désirée Clary [Footnote: Eugénie Bernardine Désirée Clary married, August 16th, 1798, Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, afterwards Charles XIV., King of Sweden. Her elder sister Julie had become the wife of Joseph Bonaparte in 1794.] had thrown Bonaparte over for him, and then had thrown him over for Bernadotte. He also described riding through Paris with Bonaparte on the day of Brumaire.' Having completely outgrown the nervous invalidishness of his earlier boyhood, Dilke at eighteen years of age was extending his activities in all directions. 'In 1861 I find by my diaries that I was at the very height of my theatre-going, attending theatres in Paris and in London with equal regularity; and in this year I wrote an elaborate criticism of Fechter's Hamlet, which is the first thing I ever wrote in the least worth reading, but it is not worth preservation, and has now been destroyed by me. At Easter, 1861, I walked to Brighton in a single day from London, and the next day attended the volunteer review. I was a great walker, and frequently walked my fifty miles within the day. My interest in military affairs continued, and I find among my letters of 1861 passages which might have formed part of my writings on military subjects of 1887 to 1889. I went down to see the new Tilbury forts, criticized the system of the distribution of strength in the Thames defences, advocated "a mile of vigorous peppering as against a slight dusting of feathers every half-hour"; and went to Shoeburyness to see the trial of the Whitworth guns.' His cousin, William Wentworth Grant Dilke, was Captain and Adjutant of the 77th Regiment, and Charles Dilke remembered the young officer's visit to bid good-bye before he departed for the Crimea, where he met his death. Though old Mr. Dilke had sympathized with the wonderful manoeuvres of the child's armies of leaden soldiers, and had added to them large reinforcements, he became troubled by his grandson's keen and excited following of all the reports from the Crimea. He had a terror of the boy's becoming a soldier, and 'used to do his best to point out the foolish side of war.' But this, as the passage already quoted shows, did not deter his pupil from beginning, while still a growing youth, detailed study of military matters.