double tragedy, for the child too was dead. The accounts of the last
moments of the Princess are exceedingly touching. When told that her baby
boy was not living, she said: "I am grieved, for myself, for the English
people, but O, above all, I feel it for my dear husband!" Taking an
opportunity when the Prince was away from her bedside, she asked if she
too must die. The physician did not directly reply, but said, "Pray be
calm."

"I know what _that_ means," she replied, then added, "Tell it to my
husband,--tell it with caution and tenderness, and be sure to say to him,
from me, that I am still the happiest wife in England."

It seems, according to the Queen, that it was Stockmar that took this
last message to the Prince, who lacked the fortitude to remain by the
bedside of his dying wife--that it was Stockmar who held her hand till it
grew pulseless and cold, till the light faded from her sweet blue eyes as
her great life and her great love passed forever from the earth. Yet it
seems that through a mystery of transmigration, that light and life and
love were destined soon to be reincarnated in a baby cousin, born in May,
1819, called at first "the little May-flower," and through her earliest
years watched and tended as a frail and delicate blossom of hope.




CHAPTER II.

Birth of the Princess Victoria--Character of her Father--Question of the
Succession to the Throne--Death of the Duke of Kent--Baptism of Victoria
--Removal to Woolbrook Glen--Her first Escape from Sudden Death--Picture