Even when Mendelssohn went to England and was cordially received by the young Queen Victoria, and when she asked him what she could grant him for his pleasure, he asked to see the royal nursery. Stratton describes the strange reward of his art as follows: "Delighted beyond everything, the Queen led the way, and the two were soon deep in the mysteries of children's clothing, dietary, ailments, and all that appertains to the duties of the heads of a family. Perchance he inspected the juvenile wardrobe of the future Empress of his own Germany." On one of the home festivals, Cécile and her sister gave and acted a comic dialogue between two ladies' maids, in Frankfort dialect. Gradually, however, Mendelssohn's overbusy musical enthusiasm wore down his health, and at thirty-seven he was nearing the end of his marvellous vitality and vivacity. In May, 1847, his sister Fanny was conducting a rehearsal of her choir; she sat at the piano till suddenly her hands dropped from the keys, and she was dead. The news was told to Mendelssohn without any preparation; with a scream he dropped senseless; it was said that a blood-vessel had broken in his brain. From this time on he was a changed man, weary of everything. He sank gradually until, the evening of November 4, 1847, he died, painlessly, in the presence of his wife, his brother, and three friends. His funeral was a fitting close to his splendid life; six years later Cécile died at Frankfort of consumption. Of Mendelssohn's character there is no need to speak further here; it was strangely summed up in his own words, in a letter he wrote to a man who had told him that he was spoken of as a veritable saint. How few saints are canonised in their own time, and how few deserve it ever! But let us take Mendelssohn's own words for his own epitaph: