rendered still more sorrowful by the fact that the age of the
cherished grandmother of the delightful "dear" family party rendered
it not very probable that she, for one, would see all her children
round her again, the Duke and Duchess of Coburg went one stage with
the travellers, and then there was another reluctant if less painful
parting.

The Queen and the Prince stopped at the quaint little town of
Eisenach, which Helen of Orleans was yet to make her home. They were
received by the Grand Duke and Hereditary Duchess of Saxe-Weimar, with
whom the strangers drove through the autumn woods to the famous old
fortress of the Wartburg, which, in its time, dealt a deadly blow to
Roman Catholicism by sheltering, in the hour of need, the Protestant
champion, Luther. Like the good Protestants her Majesty and the Prince
were, they went to see the great reformer's room, and looked at the
ink-splash on the wall--the mark of his conflict with the devil--the
stove at which he warmed himself, the rude table at which he wrote and
ate, and above all, the glorious view over the myriads of tree-tops
with which he must have refreshed his steadfast soul. But if Luther is
the hero of the Wartburg, there is also a heroine--the central figure
of that "Saint's Tragedy" which Charles Kingsley was to give to the
world in the course of the next two or three years--St. Elizabeth of
Thuringia, the tenderest, bravest, most tortured soul that ever
received the doubtful gain of canonization. There is the well by which
she is said to have ministered to her sick poor, half-way up the
ascent to the Wartburg, and down in the little town nestling below,
may be seen the remains of an hospital bearing her name.

From Fulda, where the royal party slept, they journeyed to Goethe's
town of Frankfort, where Ludwig I., who turned Munich into a great